


Roadtrip to the End of the World

by inkdr0p



Category: Supernatural
Genre: And Dean is the one who will listen, Angst and Feels, Angst and Fluff, Cas is an ancient multidimensional being, Cas loves bees, Castiel Deserves to be Loved (Supernatural), Castiel and Dean Winchester Have a Profound Bond, Castiel will talk about bees and birds and moths and nature to anyone who will listen, Castiel's Handprint (Supernatural), Dean Winchester Deserves to be Happy, Dean Winchester Has PTSD, Dean Winchester Has a Crush on Castiel, Dean Winchester Loves Pie, Dean Winchester and Sam Winchester Use Their Words, Dean has some stuff to work through, Dean is a weepy drunk when he wants to be, Diners, Episode: s05e03 Free to Be You and Me, Episode: s05e04 The End, Fluff, Las Vegas, M/M, Roadtrip Fic, Sam Winchester Knows, Sam covertly gets Dean and Cas to go on a date, Sam is a nerd, Sleeping in the Impala (Supernatural), Star Trek References, Team Free Will (Supernatural), Winged Castiel (Supernatural), Wingfic, dean is a nerd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-17
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:08:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 24,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26513446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkdr0p/pseuds/inkdr0p
Summary: "The end is nigh, isn’t it? So why not eat dessert for lunch and drive halfway across the country to spend a few days letting yourself have fun. One last hurrah before you buckle down and save the world. Do your best to ignore that nagging voice in your head that tells you you’re being selfish, that the devil is out there somewhere, that he's going to take your brother and that you should be trying to stop him. But what if you can’t? What if this is one last hurrah before you fail and everything goes to shit.Maybe this is a last meal, but it’s also the best damn pie Dean's ever had. As he glances over at his brother and his angel -- still talking about who knows what -- a smaller, quieter voice answers the chorus of self doubt echoing through his head.Or what if we succeed?"----------OR: Dean's back from the future, Sam's back from his break, and Cas is, well, Cas. As good a time as any to finally take that road trip to the Star Trek Experience Dean's been thinking about since he crawled out of the ground and learned the Apocalypse was a real goddamn thing. All he has to do now is remember how to have fun.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 28
Kudos: 85





	1. Breakfast of Champions

**Author's Note:**

> So, Dean gets his great idea to spend the end of the world in Vegas (specifically the Star Trek Experience) in 4x02 “Are You There God, It's Me, Dean Winchester” but since I think we can all agree that s4 Cas wouldn’t be very fun to go on a roadtrip with this fic doesn’t take place until (and in place of) 5x05 “Fallen Idols.” Dean and Cas have cemented their friendship, Dean’s got a lot to work through after his trip to a disastrous future, and Sam’s back with his brother. So instead of that awful Paris Hilton episode (sorry) I’m sending the boys off to the Las Vegas Hilton, former home of the greatest place on earth: The Star Trek Experience.
> 
> When I started writing this, I expected it to be a goofy, fun romp, and while it definitely has plenty of fun moments it's turned out to be much more contemplative than I was expecting. It's been satisfying to write, and I hope -- though I'm really not sure -- that it's satisfying to read as well.
> 
> eta: HOLY SHIT DESTIEL IS CANON

Sam is already sitting at the small table in Bobby’s kitchen, the coffee mug in front of him adding yet another faint brown circle to the complex pattern on the stained wooden surface. It’s not that Sam’s being careless, it’s just that there is exactly one proper coaster in the whole house and it’s currently holding up the short leg of Bobby’s enormous wooden desk. Like everything else about Bobby’s place, the kitchen table is so worn from years and years of hot meals and cold beers and the occasional sprawled out hunter groaning his way through a hasty late-night stitch job that the wear and tear has become strangely welcome. The exhaustion is part of the charm. Bobby does his best to keep things clean, but other than a couple of flip phones labeled with masking tape and three-letter acronyms, and the big floppy-haired guy sitting at the table, nothing in this house dates past 1982.

Everything in this house is loved and cared for, but nothing in this house isn’t tired and worn.

It’s the first morning since Dean came back from that burned out future Detroit, the one reigned over by a silver-tongued Sam in a clean white suit. Dean’s spent the last few minutes fussing over his coffee (he drinks it black and knows he's not exactly fooling Sam), doing everything he can to avoid having to turn around and face his brother as he gives him the quick and dirty version of what went on and what he saw. 

Normally, Dean would have to fend off a gentle barrage of questions and concern, of puppy dog eyes and forehead creases that beg Dean to open up and give Sam more. This morning though, Sam is quiet, limiting the few questions he does ask to the bare minimum needed to keep the story straight. Dean figures it’s because Sam doesn’t want to linger on Dean’s experiences any more than _he_ does and not because Sam has suddenly stopped being the feelings guy, but as he finishes up his story he’s grateful either way. “Anyway I missed you and it was weird seeing you like that, like… not you. I’m glad you’re back.”

The brothers sit in silence until Dean finally takes a deep breath and turns around to face a Sam who looks to be lost in thought. Dean watches his brother for a moment before he schools his features into his trademark ‘adorable asshole’ smirk and tries to lighten the mood. “You looked like a fucking BeeGee in that suit.” 

Tries and fails. Nothing. Sam probably didn’t even hear him.

Dean sits down at the table, swallows down a mouthful of coffee that’s now unpleasantly cool, clears his throat, and tries again. “I mean, just think about it Sammy, the junkless wonder throwing orgies…”

Sam blinks once, twice, and turns a confused face toward his brother. That one worked. “Dude, you think about Cas’ junk enough for the both of us.”

Oops, that one worked too well.

“What? No I don’t!” Dean feels himself get a little warm, and it’s definitely not because of the coffee. The nasty, cold-as-shit coffee.

“Yeah Dean, you kinda do.” Sam deepens his voice and purses his lips in a crude but effective imitation of his older brother. “‘Smooth, like a Ken doll!’”

“Fuck man, I take it back, I did not miss you. And I don’t have duck lips.”

“Yeah Dean, _you kinda do_.”

Dean hesitantly touches his hand to his mouth like he’s afraid of what he’s about to find there, patting his face with concern that quickly turns to a sort of cocky pride. Right as Dean opens his mouth to explain to Sam that some people really like that sort of thing, he’s interrupted by the unmistakable sound of rustling feathers and the small whoosh of air that comes from a six-foot-tall man suddenly occupying every cubic inch of a guy’s personal space.

“ _Jesus_ Cas!” Dean startles and sloshes a bit of cold coffee onto the table.

“As I have explained to you before, Dean, this vessel is anatomically complete. I don’t understand why you continue to think otherwise.” Cas' deep voice carries a patient confusion that makes him sound like an exasperated teacher explaining a simple concept to a small child for the tenth time. Dean, clearly, is the child here.

“Dude, did you -- take a step back, man.” Castiel takes exactly one step back. “Did you come here just to tell me about your dick?”

Bobby, of course, chooses the exact moment Dean utters the word “dick” to appear in the doorway to the kitchen. His step falters and he really looks like he wants to turn right around and leave, but he also looks like he’s going to drop dead if he doesn’t get some coffee. After a moment balanced in between, the draw of the coffee maker pulls him in and he commits himself to whatever the hell he just walked into.

“So uh, good morning,” Bobby offers in a tepid attempt to break up the awkward staring match going on between Dean and the angel who appeared unannounced in his home, _again_.

“You prayed to me, Dean, and I answered.”

“Wha, I didn’t pray to you.” Dean turns to Bobby, desperate to make sure he knows what’s going on even if Dean himself doesn’t. “I did not pray to him.”

“You were thinking of me.” Cas explains.

“Yeah, I do that.”

“Intently.”

Sam swallows a bark of laughter and Bobby sighs audibly and pours a little more whiskey into his coffee.

“Are you gonna sit or what? You’re looming over me.” Dean grumps, pushing a chair out with his foot. Cas lowers himself stiffly into the seat, even after a year moving like he’s unused to this particular configuration of limbs and solidity.

“So, you boys lookin’ for a case?” Bobby looks at the three men. None of them answer and all of them look like they could use a whole lot of sleep, even the one who doesn’t sleep. “Or maybe you want to stay around here for a couple days? Recuperate, help me look for demon signs.” Nothing. “Well don’t all answer at once.”

Bobby moves around the kitchen, tidying up to pass the time and wiping down counters that don’t really need wiping. The nervous levity that filled the kitchen just a minute ago is gone. Sam’s looking down at his coffee, unseeing; Dean’s leaned back in his chair, bouncing a leg and resting his eyes; and Cas is Cas so even with his eyes closed Dean is sure he’s being stared at.

“I think I got a job for you.” Bobby finally ventures, sounding awfully pleased with himself.

“Bobby, I don’t know…” Sam starts before Bobby interrupts him gently.

“Trust me on this one. I got a friend down in Albuquerque -- well, not actually a _friend_ , the guy’s kind of an ass. Anyway, he lent me a real rare lorebook last time I was down his way and I need to get it back to him.”

“So call the post office,” Dean drawls, not bothering to open his eyes.

“Well, _smartass_ , this book’d cost an arm and a leg to ship since it comes in its very own lead-lined curse box, and anyway it’s not something you want to see get lost in transit. What I was about to say if you’d let me finish,” Bobby shoots a look at Dean, who is now giving the older man as much of his attention as he can without having to lift his head up from where it’s resting on the back of the chair, “is that you drive down there and deliver it. Take a couple days there and back, stop along the way, enjoy yourselves. Take a break.”

“Uh, there’s an apocalypse on, in case you forgot.”

“No Dean, I didn’t forget. But unless you’ve figured out a way to stop it in the next couple of days, I don’t see why you can’t give yourselves a break. This ain’t a sprint, Dean, it’s a marathon. Besides, last year when we realized just how much had hit the fan I seem to recall you being real quick to---”

“Vegas.”

“Exactly.”

“...The Star Trek Experience.” A small smile lights across Dean’s face, making him look young in a way he really hasn’t since he returned from Hell. 

Sam rolls his eyes at his brother before letting Bobby know they’ll take the job.

“I’m thinking you boys rest up here for another day -- no offense but you look like crap -- and head out first thing tomorrow.”

“I’ll continue monitoring heaven while you’re away and will let you know of any new developments.” Cas offers.

“What? No Cas buddy, you’re coming with us!” Dean claps the angel on the arm and gets up from the table. 

“Oh, thank you Dean. I would be honored to experience Star Trek with you,” Cas replies solemnly as he follows Dean out of the kitchen and into the den. Dean flops himself onto the ancient couch, his only plan for the next few hours being to move as little as possible. Cas sits next to him like a cat content to silently follow its human around the house.

Bobby gives Sam a quick squeeze on the shoulder as he walks past and heads toward the back of the house, leaving Sam alone in the kitchen. From his spot on the couch Dean watches through heavy eyelids as Sam lingers at the table a little longer then hefts himself up and heads over to the sink.

The last thing Dean hears before he drifts off into a blessedly dreamless nap is Sam muttering a sing-song “Hi Cas. ‘ _Hello Sam_ ,’” while he rinses out his mug.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudoas always appreciated! They're the gas in Baby's tank!


	2. On the Road

Dean had only been out of the ground a day or two when the enormity of the situation hit him. It was crazy enough to get raised from the dead, but throwing in the apocalypse -- the actual, biblical, motherfucking _capital A_ Apocalypse -- was just too much. At first, his only reaction had been the nervous kind of laughter that says “We’re all going to die (again) so we might as well enjoy it.” Unfortunately for Dean, the world had other ideas and any thoughts he might have had of throwing on a cowboy hat and riding that A-bomb til the end were pretty quickly replaced by impending doom and demon blood and the unsettling revelation that angels are real and, for the most part, dicks.

But this morning, as Dean heads out to the Impala to throw a duffel filled only with clothes and toiletries into the trunk -- no special weapons or books or detailed maps of where to find the latest thing that needs to be dead -- he feels… kinda good actually. It’s not that the end of all their troubles are in sight, and he knows he’ll probably feel like shit about this trip next week, for having fun when he should be saving the world. But right now in this moment, sliding the keys into the ignition, things seem okay. He’s found the one good angel, Sam’s done with the demon blood, and Bobby’s right: they don’t have any leads and this might be their last chance to have fun. 

Attaboy, Dean. Use that cynicism for good.

They’ve been on the road for about an hour, Sam in the passenger’s seat manning the old beat up green thermos and handing over cups of hot coffee anytime anyone -- okay, _Dean_ \-- asks for it. Cas is in the back, perched right in the middle of the bench seat for some reason, clearly basking in the small joy of being included on this journey, of having friends and getting to be a friend. Which, goddamn that’s sad as hell and if the clench in his chest is any indication, Dean probably shouldn’t think too much more about it or he’ll spoil the fragile good mood he’s cultivated for himself.

“Vegas, baby! Sin City!” Dean says a little too loudly and with an almost painful grin, drumming his hands over Baby’s steering wheel and trying not to think about how foreign it feels to be happy. Given all the crap he’s been through over the past few lifetimes he shouldn’t really be surprised.

“Dean, I’m not sure visiting a city of sin is a good idea,” Cas cautions from the backseat. “You recall the den of iniquity. An entire city celebrating all of sin will be infinitely worse.”

“It’s not _all_ sin, Cas. Mostly just lust and greed," Dean very helpfully clarifies.

“And gluttony,” Sam adds.

“Oh the buffets...” From the corner of his eye Dean can see just how uncomfortable his food moans -- they're sex noises, let’s be honest -- are making Sam. Dean cranks them up even further.

“This is not helping,” Cas says from the back seat.

"Yeah," Sam agrees from the passenger's.

Dean finally quiets down with a laugh and they drive on in silence for a while, Dean letting himself bask in the simple pleasure of the open road. They’re in Nebraska still, route keeping them far enough from Omaha and Lincoln that they never really see anything they can call a city. A town or two here and there, sometimes just a gas station at a crossroads that reminds Dean a little too much of dragging himself up out of the dirt, but mostly it’s endless fields. It’s desolate in a way that’s still filled with life; knots of cattle gather here and there along fences that parallel the roadway, and the land from the edge of the asphalt to the flat line of the distant horizon is a carpet of green that ripples in the breeze.

This part of the country is covered in a shaky but regular grid of north-south and east-west country backroads. Even the interstates don’t cut much of a diagonal, so the morning’s drive southwest takes them on a stair step path across the state; once they get into Colorado things will smooth out, the drive a lot more south than west. There’s a more direct route that would take them through Kansas, just clipping the northwest corner of the state, but even though it wouldn’t take them anywhere near Lawrence, Dean works out an alternative. It’s not like he refuses to set foot in the state -- they take jobs there all the time -- but Dean doesn’t go into Kansas if he doesn’t absolutely have to. Can’t imagine ever living there again, and all-in-all it’s just easier for him to avoid it if he can.

Dean occasionally glances back at Castiel in the backseat, the rearview mirror framing the angel’s face as he gazes out the window. Dean smiles to himself, a small and hidden thing, recognizing the look on Cas’ face from his own childhood spent on endless stretches of rural highways. To the uninitiated it might look like boredom, but Dean knows better. Cas is hypnotized by row after row of alfalfa working like a zoetrope laid flat, creating an ever-shifting fan of overlapping diagonals that blur in and out of focus as the car moves past at highway speeds. As a kid Dean would watch that for hours from his spot in the backseat -- the same place where Cas is sitting now -- while Sam slept sprawled out on the bench next to him. 

“Hey, how ‘bout some music?” Dean offers after a while to the silent car. When he doesn’t gesture for the box of tapes that’s slid down somewhere out of reach, Sam realizes Dean’s letting him choose the music.

“Wow uh, anything you _don’t_ want to listen to?” Sam asks while grabbing the battered box and flipping it open.

“Nah, surprise me.”

Sam slides in a Foghat tape and they drive.

\---------------

"What's up?" Sam asks as Dean steers Baby off the highway and onto the surface streets of whatever town they're passing through. It's bigger than most places they stop in, but it's still small enough that Dean’s sure it’ll have a few decent greasy spoons to choose from. Too small and you're stuck eating at the only place in town whether or not it's any good; too big and it's all fast food chains and people who left diners behind a couple generations back.

“You hungry, Sam? Seems like the last town for a while to stop for lunch.”

Dean spots the big neon arrow pouring down the side of the even bigger neon milkshake from a few streets over; when he pulls up to the low, cotton candy pink building and finds a parking space right out front where Baby can shine, he knows it’s meant to be. Mearle's Drive In is the kind of place that you're not sure has changed the fry oil since the Eisenhower administration. The kind of place that maybe one time was all poodle skirts and letterman jackets, but is now just a health code nightmare with the best goddamn burger in a 50-mile radius.

It's perfect.

Sam’s tall enough -- or the neglected overhang is sagging low enough -- that he has to duck his head a bit as he leads the three of them toward the front door. Inside, the cramped interior is just as rundown as the outside would have you expect. It’s not that Mearle’s is a dump, but there’s only so much you can do to keep linoleum from 1961 from, well, looking like linoleum from 1961. It’s like this place had enough spark left to keep exactly one thing beautiful, and it’s poured all of that effort into the chrome U-shaped counter that dominates the space. Inside the U is where the magic happens: a big flat top griddle wafting curlicues of smoke sits between an ancient milkshake machine and a bank of fryers. Outside the U, the wall of the diner follows its curve, making every booth a window seat.

Dean slows a little as he follows Sam toward an empty booth, the pastry case set into the counter calling to him like a siren. Cheesecakes, Danishes, little piles of cookies dusted in powdered sugar, and oh god the pies. Apple, cherry, key lime so tall he’s not sure how they got it in there, peach, blackberry, and some jiggly chocolate thing that looks terrible but probably tastes delicious. Dean had been so excited for a cheeseburger when he’d walked in, but all thoughts of anything other than pie have evaporated completely.

Dean finally stands up from the pastry case and watches Castiel’s slow progress toward the booth Sam has picked out. Cas usually follows behind the Winchesters anyway, but today he’s really scoping things out. Dean sometimes wonders if Cas brings up the rear because it’s a tactical thing, like he’s guarding them in case something sneaks up from behind. Or maybe he feels like a third wheel; Dean hopes not, but is also pretty sure Cas would point out that none of them are wheels, so of course he doesn’t think he’s the third one. 

It occurs to Dean that he could just ask.

“What’re you doing, Cas?”

“I’m looking at things.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve never seen them before.” Cas squints particularly hard at a gumball machine.

“You’re like a billion years old. How have you not seen everything?”

“First off, I’m quite a bit older than that actually.” Dean does his best not to look too awed by this. “And second, I have never been to this exact place in this exact time. I may have been to this point on the earth’s surface 100,000 or 100 million years ago, but I have never been here today, now, with you and all the other people who are here with us. This is a unique experience and it is worthy of care and attention. This combination of time and place will never happen again, Dean.”

Before Dean has a chance to respond to _that_ , a tired voice calls from the back. “Anywhere’s fine, be with you in a sec.” Sam’s been hovering near a booth while Cas calmly blows Dean’s mind, and now that permission’s been granted he takes a seat. Cas sits on the opposite side and Dean slides in next to him.

True to her word, the waitress is at their booth ready to take their order before any of them have had a chance to think about what they want. Except for Dean, of course. Unfortunately, Jeanne decides to start with Sam. He frowns down at the menu in front of him, probably trying to find something healthy in a place that just flat out does not do that kind of thing. He finally relents and goes for a burger and fries. Sam’s not fooling anyone, Dean knows he loves a good burger just as much as he does.

“Make ‘em curly.” Dean adds at the end of Sam’s order.

“Hey!”

“Come on man, I’m gonna eat most of them for you anyway.”

Sam pouts, no other word for it, but waves his hand in defeat.

“And for you?” Jeanne looks over at Dean.

“Which of those pies over there is the best?” Dean asks with a smile.

“That’d be the cherry.”

“Awesome. A slice of cherry pie then.” 

There’s an expectant pause from everyone at the table, and when Dean doesn’t order anything else Sam finally speaks up. “You can’t eat a slice of pie for lunch, Dean. You’ll be hungry again in an hour and I have to be in the car with you.”

“You’re right. A slice of peach as well.” Not looking over at his brother, Dean points a spoon at him and preempts any additional complaints with “ _Two_ slices of pie, Sam.” Dean’s grin is positively shiteating. Jeanne, who is clearly on his side, clucks a laugh as she moves her gaze over to Castiel to take his order.

“Nothing for me.”

“Come on Cas, get something. I don’t want you staring at me while I eat.”

“He’s going to stare at you while you eat no matter what,” Sam says under his breath.

“Shaddup.”

“I’ll have, um…” Cas fidgets with the laminated menu, corners curled up and peeling apart, studies it carefully, and answers “Maple syrup.”

Dean chokes on the mouthful of water he’d just gulped down and looks over at Cas, then down at the menu in front of him. That’s when he realizes that while yes, Cas is a weird dude who _would_ order maple syrup for some bewildering but perfectly logical reason, he’s actually just blindly ordering off a menu that’s been flipped over to the extras, sides, and drinks.

Splaying his hand out on the menu like he needs to break Cas’ concentration on it and tapping it a couple times, Dean looks back up at Jeanne (who at least appears to be enjoying her shift a bit more now) and asks for a cup of coffee for his friend. Once the three of them are alone, Dean turns to face Cas completely at the same time that Sam leans over the table, hands folded in front of him and eyes wide.

“Dude, maple syrup?!” Sam asks, an incredulous smile spreading over his face.

“Next time pick an actual meal!”

“Says the guy who’s eating pie for lunch.” Sam might be the resident expert when it comes to meticulously constructed bitchfaces, but the stink eye Dean throws him shows that Dean’s no slouch either.

“I’ve never eaten a meal,” Cas points out.

Dean opens his mouth to reply but what the hell do you say to that? Instead he works his jaw a few times before turning back to Sam with a shrug and a “He’s never eaten a meal,” like of course, how normal.

When the food arrives, Sam and Dean dig in and Cas just holds his cup of coffee like it’s fragile and he’s worried he might break it.

Sam and Cas start some boring conversation about something that happened 800 years ago in another country and pretty soon Dean’s not paying attention. He’s drifted off, retreated into his thoughts, the front of his mind focused on his food, the back of it on the dread that’s been eating at him since Sam started having visions.

Dean knows Sam’s right, that he’ll be hungry long before they stop again for another meal, but he just can’t bring himself to care all that much as he works back and forth between the two slices of pie. He’s also aware that some small part of him is treating this like a last meal, not that he’s expecting anything to happen between now and dinner, exactly. It’s just the tinge of desperation that seems to have pervaded Dean’s waking hours since he found out why exactly he wasn’t in the ground anymore. The end is nigh, isn’t it? So why not eat dessert for lunch and drive halfway across the country to spend a few days letting yourself have fun. One last hurrah before you buckle down and save the world. Do your best to ignore that nagging voice in your head that tells you you’re being selfish, that the devil -- the actual, literal devil -- is out there somewhere and you should be trying to stop him. He’s going to take your brother, and you should stop him. But what if you can’t? What if this is one last hurrah before you fail and everything goes to shit.

Maybe this _is_ a last meal, maybe this _is_ a last hurrah, but it’s also the best damn pie Dean has ever had. As he glances over at his brother and his angel -- still talking about who knows what -- a smaller, quieter voice answers the chorus of self doubt echoing through his head.

_Or what if we succeed?_

Dean scrapes up the last of the pie, pops it in his mouth, and joins the conversation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading, I hope you're enjoying it! Comments, suggestions, kudos -- all are welcome and appreciated!
> 
> Mearle's Drive In was a real place in my hometown, but sadly closed down after a fire a few years after I moved away for college. It was exactly as [rundown](https://www.roadarch.com/08/4/mearles.jpg) and [wonderful](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/44/0a/d5/440ad565ff2ae3f84417d9981138f2ca.jpg) as described.


	3. Being and Nothingness

Fifty miles out from the diner, they hit Colorado and head south.

Another fifty after that, and Dean’s hungry again. Shit, he knew this was going to happen. Thankfully, Baby’s less than stellar gas mileage means Dean has an excuse to stop at a minimart and grab some snacks without having to come out and admit that Sam was right. The look on Sam’s face as Dean pulls into the no-name, one-pump station tells him it doesn’t matter and Sam knows it’s bullshit, but whatever.

“Sam, can you fill her up? I’m going to go check out the snacks.” Dean nods his head at the little store built onto the side of the garage and hefts himself up out of the car. His legs are a bit shaky under him from the drive -- what the hell, they haven’t even been on the road for that long -- and he kicks his feet around to wake everything back up, scuffing his boots against the gravel and making a little dust cloud. Cas silently watches the dust swirl from his place in the backseat; he’s doing his cat thing again, and just like with cats it’s hard to tell sometimes if his aloof stillness is a sign of annoyance or contentment.

“Hey, you wanna stretch your legs, Cas?”

Castiel looks down at the lower half of his body, confusion obvious in the pull of his eyebrows. “No?”

“No I mean, d’you want to come with me into the store?”

“Oh, yes.”

A bell jingles as Dean pushes the door open, and a leathery old mechanic comes shambling in from the adjoining garage where he must have been working. “Can I help you boys with anything?” he asks, wiping the engine grease from his hands and making his way behind the counter.

“Forty on the pump,” and, after a pause, “You don’t have pie do you?”

“Sorry son, I can’t say we do.”

Dean nods to the guy that it’s no problem -- he really doesn’t need to eat _more_ pie today -- and starts milling up and down the aisles of the small store. This is one of those mom-&-pop gas stations you still sometimes find in the middle of nowhere and are the best places to stop for road food. The big chains like Gas-n-Sip all sell the same crap you can find anywhere, but these little places always seem to have some previously forgotten favorite that Dean didn’t even know was still made. This time it’s an off _off_ brand of beef jerky with a poorly drawn eagle on the package that Dean hadn’t thought about in years. He buys it all.

As he heads to the front of the store, Dean stops suddenly, frowning for just a second or two before schooling his features into the pleasant neutral expression he uses on kids, old people, and when he needs to convince himself he’s fine.

Cas is over in the corner, entirely focused on a bag of marshmallows he’s gently squeezing. Dean’s pretty sure he didn’t see him flinch.

When Dean gets to the register he smells it again. The sharp odor of burnt cars, of charred plastic dashboards and melted seat foam and the sickly sweet of transmission fluid boiling off; the rot of old garbage piled up, never to be collected; of death and decay; of Detroit.

This happened with Hell too. The images, the sounds, the physical sensations of that place confined themselves to Dean’s dreams, but the smells followed him into his waking life. It took months for Dean to stop getting whiffs of Hell every time he walked into a diner, the meat sizzling on the big open griddle smelling both delicious and disgusting. He knows it’s going to be the same with Detroit.

Dean pays quickly and heads for the door. Cas follows, and the brief pressure of a hand on his arm tells Dean that maybe he did notice, after all.

\-------------

“Dean, we’ve driven 600 miles already today.” Sam yawns from the passenger seat and makes a show of stretching out his legs what little he can.

Dean rolls his eyes. “It’s only six. I’ve still got four or five hours of driving in me.”

“We don’t have to push it, there’s no case, remember? Nobody’s going to get eaten by a monster just because we stopped for the night.”

Dean looks out over the landscape. There are mountains in the distance, the Rockies, he figures, but they don’t carry the promise of snow or pine trees or anything else cool and refreshing. They’ve been looming on the western horizon for the last few hours, jagged and brown and ominous and just a little too large for how far away they must be, and suddenly Dean realizes he doesn’t want to look at them anymore. Sam’s right, this doesn’t have to be a long haul. “Alright fine. Just a couple more hours.”

“Two, tops. My butt’s practically asleep.”

An hour and a half later, Dean’s easing the Impala over a particularly rough patch of asphalt and into a lot with paint lines so faint they give only the suggestion of parking spaces. “Long ago, this was a parking spot,” they say. “You may honor the past and use it as one now if you so wish.”

The High Chaparral Inn is a squat two-storey affair that hasn't seen a fresh coat of paint in decades and with stucco so old the once rough peaks have been rubbed down to soft hills, grey poking up through dirty beige. Sam heads to the office to get them a room while Dean swings a couple of duffels onto his shoulder and Castiel stares up unblinkingly at the single extremely bright floodlight illuminating the crumbling parking lot. When Dean slams the Impala's trunk closed, the sudden noise breaks Cas from his reverie and he turns to stare just as unblinkingly at Dean, like he can actually see him in the dark, like his retinas weren't just burned to a crisp. Because they weren't. Dean never really forgets just how alien his friend is, but sometimes he doesn't quite remember it either. How can someone so foreign feel so familiar? It’s like---

“Hey Dean.”

Dean absolutely does not jump, not even the tiniest bit, at Sam’s sudden presence.

“Jesus dude, how are you this stealthy _and_ this big?” Sam just shrugs. “So you got the room?”

“No actually uh, I got in there and kind of forgot that I don’t have a credit card.”

“Sam, you have fourteen credit cards.”

“Yeah well, about that. I… burned them. All. When I ‘quit.’”

“You’re kidding me. Why would you---” Dean throws his head back, realization hitting him. “You burned all the IDs too didn’t you.”

“...Yeah.”

“You were gone for a _week_ , Sam.” Dean only has to think about Sam’s adventures in civilian life for half a second to come up with about a million questions. “How did you even get a job? You don’t have a work history.”

Sam brings a giant hand to his chest in mock offense. “I worked three days a week at the library in college.”

“Okay well, that was five years ago and _not a bar_.” Dean eyes Sam suspiciously. “You know this doesn’t make sense, right?”

“I’m supposed to be the devil and you’ve been to the future. Since when do our lives make sense, Dean?”

Dean opens his mouth to reply, but a pretty lame “I’ll get the room then” is all he can come up with. Halfway to the office, Dean turns back to Sam and shouts “I am _not_ spending all day at Kinkos with you when we get to Vegas!”

A few minutes later, “Chris McVie” has booked a room at the farthest end of the motel. They’re not going to need seclusion tonight for bringing shotguns and machetes out to the car or their battered and bloody selves back in from it, but it’s habit and Dean doesn’t think twice.

“Hey, Stevie!” Dean’s hanging halfway out the office door, calling out to Sam. Sam pops his head up from the open trunk and easily catches the room key that’s tossed to him before Dean retreats back into the office.

He came back in here to browse the stand of pamphlets and brochures that takes up a whole wall of the office. Every motel like this has one of these, and as expected most of the brochures advertise local tourist destinations, the homely graphic design doing its very best to entice people to rent a cabin or take a canoe trip. One of them just says “RIDE A DONKEY” in big red letters. Dean had noticed a few credit card applications on the rack and grabs one of each before making his way to the room. Between these and whatever they can pick up at gas stations, Sam should be good.

Dean doesn’t even have a chance to close the door of the motel room before Sam asks the question.

“Why do I have to be Stevie Nicks?”

Dean digs around in one of the duffles, then another, and a third before he finally comes up with a can of salt. Only then does he look up at Sam and pantomime tossing long, flowing locks over his shoulder.

Sam snorts. “Everyone in Fleetwood has long hair, Dean.”

“Ah, but they don’t all have soft girly hair.”

“Yeah alright, whatever.” Sam is so over this shit, which means Dean isn’t going to drop it any time soon. “So who’s the room under?”

“McVie.”

Sam scrunches his face up, but before he has a chance to point out his brother’s hypocrisy, Dean cuts him off. “What can I say, man. Christine McVie is awesome.”

Dean moves around the room, laying salt and doing all the other things normal people definitely don’t do when they check into a motel. It’s not until he’s halfway through drawing some angel warding on the door -- then sheepishly rubbing it off because oops, they’ve got an angel -- that he notices Cas isn’t around.

“Hey, where’d Cas go?”

“He went outside to,” Sam pauses to make sure he gets the quote exactly right, “‘watch the moths.’”

“What a nerd,” Dean chuckles and heads over to the front door, careful not to disturb the salt line he just laid. When he sticks his head out the open doorway he sees Cas standing in the middle of the parking lot staring up at the same painfully bright light he was before. Dean opens his mouth to call out, but stops himself and just stands there watching Cas watch a light. A few fat moths streak here and there, but they’ve got be 15 or 20 feet above Cas’ head and the intense contrast between the black sky and the floodlight has to mean Cas can’t see a damn thing. Dean was expecting something out of a Disney movie, cheerful birds alighting on the princess as she feeds and talks to them. Cas should be whispering gentle words to a big colorful moth that’s befriended him, not standing in an empty lot staring vacantly at some stupid bugs. It’s not until Dean’s halfway across the parking lot that he realizes this scene has made him angry, but he can’t pinpoint why.

“Cas, what are you doing out here? Come inside.”

“I’m observing the moths. They’re quite graceful,” Cas says right as the biggest one flies directly into the lightbulb with an audible _thunk_.

Dean glares at the light, like it’s the light’s fault Cas is out here in the first place. “Why?”

“I assume you and Sam will be sleeping soon.”

And there it is. The anger Dean had been feeling at the light, the moths, the parking lot curls around and points itself right back at Dean where it mixes with the sadness he’d felt when he looked back at Cas earlier that morning and saw how happy he was to be included.

“Buddy, if you really want to stand out here and stare at moths all night, go right ahead, but I’d--- Sam and I we’d both rather you came inside and hung out with us.”

“But I’m not supposed to watch you sleep.”

“Well, we’re not sleeping for a while anyway and we’ll figure it out when we do.” Dean feels like finely ground shit.

There’s a liquor store down the block; Dean gestures toward it and the two of them start walking. On the way back, Dean carrying a six pack and a bottle of something harder wrapped in a paper bag and tucked under his arm, he finally breaks the silence.

“Hey Cas, can I ask you a question?”

“Of course, Dean.”

“Was it real? That future? Or just Zachariah messing with me with the worst case scenario?”

Castiel takes a moment to think over his answer, and when it’s a simple and unhelpful “Yes” Dean has to work to keep the frustration off his face.

“Yes to which, Cas?”

“Both. It was a real future, but not necessarily the future that this present will manifest. All possible futures are real, and Zachariah deliberately chose to show you an unpleasant one.”

“Oh. Uh, okay. Wait, _this_ present?”

Cas smiles at this. “There are many presents. Before you ask, I don’t know much about them. The magic required to pass from this present to another is highly guarded. Only a small number of angels were entrusted with it, and I was not among them.”

They walk again in silence, and again Dean is the one to break it.

“You were pretty different, Cas. You’re always different, but this was a different different.”

“You asked me not to change, when I found you.”

“Yeah, you seemed more human and I thought it was good at first but… I guess I just like you how you are.” The subtle lift of Cas’ shoulders tells Dean the angel is pleased.

“Were you different too?”

“Yeah I was. Or, maybe I wasn’t, I don’t know.” Dean huffs out a breath, a quick laugh even though what he’s about to say isn’t funny at all. “I was hard. I thought it was kind of badass at first, to be honest. I was how I try to be sometimes now, you know. But after a while I saw that the hardness was all there was. How I was to the people around me... I didn’t treat ‘em well. I,” Dean has stopped walking now, and turns to face Cas. “I led them to their deaths. I led you to your death. On purpose, because I needed bodies and I knew you’d follow. I didn’t even give you a choice, man. I just fucking lied to you while you smiled.”

“It wasn’t you, Dean.”

“But it was, Cas, or it could be. And that’s a problem.” They begin walking again.

Cas is quiet as he asks his next question. “Does this mean you intend to say yes to Michael?”

“No. But I can’t become that Dean either. I’ll figure something out. You said it yourself, there are lots of futures, right? I guess fate can go fuck itself.”

Castiel chuckles. “Dean, I believe Zachariah taught you a different lesson than he was intending.”

When they get back to the room, Dean ushers Cas ahead of him through the door and points to one of the beds. Cas sits down happily and wiggles down into the mattress a bit to get comfortable, which is absolutely fucking adorable, and Dean sits down next to him, beer in one hand and TV remote in the other.

Sam closes his laptop and moves from the little kitchen table these rooms all seem to have to his own bed, sensing that it’s time to kick back and relax for the evening.

“What do you guys want to watch?” Dean’s already flipping through the channels, and before anyone can answer he lets out a groan. “There’s like four channels and they all look like shit.”

To Dean’s absolute and _endless_ delight, the channel that looks the least like shit is showing some nature show about bees. He’s about to complain, but cuts himself off when he sees how entranced Cas is by it. Anyway it’s not like he has much choice in the matter; the other channels are so snowy he can’t even be sure what they’re playing. Sam’s got a curled up paperback on the bed next to him -- a real, actual “I’m reading this for fun” book, not some dusty, yellowing tome full of arcane symbols and drawings of everything that’s ever tried to kill them -- and a beer in his hand and seems content just to not be in the car anymore. He gives Dean a little smile and when Dean returns it he’s suddenly struck by how cozy this scene is. It’s veering headlong into chick flick territory, but Dean doesn’t have it in him to care. He’s too tired and honestly, too comfortable.

Later, when all the beer bottles are empty, and half the other bottle too, and Sam and Dean are drifting off into sleep, Castiel does not go back outside to watch the moths.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You: Oh, a fun roadtrip fic!
> 
> Me: *hands you a dreary meditation on trauma, self doubt, and self determination*
> 
> Sorry everyone, but thank you as always for reading.


	4. Stranger in a Strange Land

Turns out, Bobby’s hunter friend is kind of odd.

Everyone in the life is odd in one way or another; it’s isolating work that pushes a person to the edge of society, and sometimes over that edge. More than once, Dean’s found himself at a loss when passing for a civilian, not knowing how to answer some simple question about domestic life while trying to pick someone up at a bar. People sure do love to talk about their childhood or the town where they grew up or the part of the country they’re from. Hard to talk about any of those things though when the only home you’ve known for the last 25 years has four wheels, bench seats, and a grenade launcher in the trunk. Good thing he’s got that smile to fall back on.

So Dean’s not really fazed when he sees that the address ten miles outside of Albuquerque corresponds to a solid acre of rusting crap with an old, weather-beaten Airstream sitting smack in the middle. There’s no way to drive the Impala up to the trailer so Dean has to park it on the side of the road, which he doesn’t love but can’t really do anything about. As the three men make their way to the camper they wind through a maze of old abandoned appliances: stoves; refrigerators; washers and dryers; those big standalone meat freezers that people in horror movies are always using to stash bodies. And that’s when it hits Dean. This is the guy’s stash.

Most bigtime hunters have them. Like other wandering hunters, John’s was a storage unit, but this guy’s taken the same approach as Bobby. See, sometimes on a hunt you find shit you can’t destroy for one reason or another and instead just need to keep away from people, safe and locked up and in the case of Conrad and Bobby, buried in your yard under two tons of rusting steel. Bobby has the benefit of _sort of_ running a scrap yard as a cover for his collection, but it looks like Conrad’s leaned all the way into the “eccentric hoarder” guise.

The camper itself is like the whole yard, but in miniature. Junk is arranged all around it, but instead of big things like bathtubs and dishwashers, it’s smaller things: sun bleached milk crates filled with old cans of turpentine; a pile of bicycle frames held together by some spiny desert weed that’s grown up through them; and a huge, flat coil of metal cable that’s come unspooled under its own size and weight. Sam follows the curve of the cable with his eyes as it loops around the back of the Airstream, then crouches down to check something on the other side of the mass of coiled metal.

“Yep,” Sam runs his fingers over the dusty ground and lets out an impressed laugh. “Iron, and it goes all the way around.”

Dean’s starting to notice some things too. Paint splashes here and there that have just enough regularity to them that they could be some form of warding; a wind chime made of bones that--- are those cat and owl? Yeah okay, that’s definitely witchy. Now that he knows what he’s looking at, Dean can’t help but be impressed by how well this guy has managed to disguise the signs of hunting.

And then he meets the guy and realizes he actually _is_ a hoarder. And a hunter too, of course, but at this point in his life it’s about a 90/10 split.

A yellowed curtain moves slightly and a sliver of wrinkled face appears in the window, one visible watery eye squinting at the brightness outside. Then it’s gone and someone’s fiddling with the latch on the camper’s door. When it finally opens, the person -- this would be Conrad -- only opens the door wide enough for half his body to show while he gives a hard look at each of the three men. Dean is almost certain there’s a sawed-off trained on them from the other side of that door, and sneaking a glance over at Sam he can tell from his body language that Sam’s thinking it too. After a long few seconds considering the men standing outside his trailer, Conrad finally leans back behind the door -- presumably to put down the shotgun -- and steps outside.

Conrad is a guy who hasn’t tried to pass as a civilian in years, who has the kind of sour gruffness that Bobby pretends to have but really doesn’t. Bobby may be a crusty old hunter, but he has the benefit of being one who’s built a surrogate family around himself. Conrad went the other direction and withdrew, and it shows. 

“You’re John Winchester’s boys, aren’t ya?” Conrad asks while pulling the door shut behind him. Before it closes, Dean catches a dimly lit glimpse of an interior that’s full of clutter. Doesn’t seem to be garbage, just _things_. Lots and lots of things.

“Dean and I are, yeah,” Sam answers.

Conrad grunts then eyes Cas suspiciously, like he’s worried he’s someone from the IRS who just happened to show up at the same time as the two hunters. “And who’s this one?”

“My name is Castiel. I’m an---”

“He’s another hunter.” Dean cuts him off.

Sam picks up where Dean’s going with this, years of bluffing their way through witness interviews making for a seamless performance. “We wanted another pair of hands. Lots of weird stuff going on lately, you know.”

“I guess… It’s just Bobby only mentioned the two of ya.” Conrad is giving Cas a run for his money the way he's eyeballing him, and Cas is giving it right back. “Don’t know ‘bout them clothes.”

Sam clears his throat. “So uh, we’ve got that box. Just bring it back here?”

“No way, I don’t want that fuckin’ thing anywhere near me.” Conrad points toward a spot in the junkyard where one of the rusty appliances has been rolled onto its side. Well, a lot of them have been rolled on their sides, but this one looks to have been done recently. “That’s where it sleeps.”

“Sleeps?” Sam smooths his hair back behind his ear in a nervous gesture. “Bobby told us it was a book.”

“It _is_ a book.”

After a couple of seconds passed in silence it’s pretty clear Conrad’s not going to elaborate on that. “Uh okay, we’ll just go get it then.” Dean jerks his head toward the Impala and Sam and Cas follow. Once they’re back at the car and out of earshot, Cas speaks.

“Why did you tell Conrad I’m a hunter?”

“Hmm? Oh uh, it’s just easier if you’re not an angel.” Dean’s not really paying attention to what he’s saying, too busy digging through one pocket and then another looking for his keys. When he gets the trunk open and looks over at Cas, he thinks the guy almost looks hurt and does a quick replay. Ah shit. “Hey no, Cas, what I meant was, Conrad’s a weird dude and I don’t really want to have to deal with whatever’s gonna pop loose in his head when he learns about you guys.”

Castiel’s expression returns to its usual neutrality, seemingly satisfied with Dean’s answer. He starts to lift the lead box -- more like a chest, really -- up out of the trunk, not even needing to ask Dean if he’d rather the heavenly being with super strength carry the big heavy thing for him, but sets it back down when Conrad makes his presence known. Putting two and two together, Dean whimpers ever so slightly and moves to grasp the box himself. He and Sam awkwardly maneuver it out of the trunk, careful not to hit Baby, and follow Conrad as he leads them back into the sea of junk.

\-----------------------

The ground here is so fucking hard, it’s like Sam and Dean have decided to chip away at concrete with spoons. Dean’s worried he might actually bend the shovel as he pounds it into the unforgiving clay. 

“Could be worse I guess. At least we don’t have to dig up a whole grave while we’re here.”

“Yeah Sam, that’s great. Just have to -- son of a _bitch!_ ” Dean’s hit a rock or something and the twang travels up the shovel and into his arm.

“I could…” Cas gestures at the hole that, even after 30 minutes of work, is just a shallow depression.

“Be my gu---” Dean’s shoulders slump as he sees Conrad shuffling over right at the wrong time. _Again_. 

“You still at it?” Conrad looks down at the beginning of the hole, hands on his hips.

“The ground’s kind of hard,” Sam says calmly, keeping a pretty good lid on the annoyance Dean knows is there.

“Hey, how’re you going to remember which -- what is this? A dryer? -- it’s under?” Dean slaps a hand on the hot rusty hunk of metal he’s definitely going to ask Cas to roll over onto the filled in hole.

“I’ll know.” And wow does that sound weirdly ominous.

“Conrad,” Cas pulls the old man’s attention toward himself. “You appear to have an extensive collection of research materials.”

“Mm-hmm.” Conrad continues to eye Cas suspiciously.

“Sam, Dean, and I are working a case, uh, for Bobby, and… we...” _Oh fuck_ Cas is about to try and lie. Dean is about half a second away from dropping the shovel and bodily interrupting Castiel, but Conrad mercifully catches on and stops Cas from having to complete whatever definitely unbelievable thing he was going to say.

“You want to look through my library.” Conrad thinks for a minute before continuing. “Alright, _for Bobby_. Come on, follow me. The easy stuff’s in the trailer; anything important you want to see, you dig it up yourself.”

Dean lets out the breath he’s been holding and gets back to scraping at the dirt. After another 15 minutes or so, he leans on his shovel and looks around at the junkyard. “God Sam, you think we’re going to end up like this guy?”

“Ask me that a year ago and I’d have said ‘Man I hope not,’ but now? I mean, ending up a grumpy old hoarder would mean we didn’t end up as a pair of burned out meatsuits, right? _And_ that the world didn’t end.”

There’s a reason most hunters die young. Dean used to think it was because their lives were filled with danger and homebrew healthcare, but now he’s wondering if maybe it’s some natural defense mechanism against becoming like _this_. 

“Are these really the only options though? The fuckin’ apocalypse or living like the world’s worst doomsday prepper?”

“You saying you want to retire?”

“Not _now_. Well, actually, retiring now sounds kind of awesome, giving the finger to Zachariah and Michael and all those other assholes, but I mean, yeah maybe.”

Sam’s stopped digging now too and looks at his brother, clearly surprised to hear Dean float the idea of leaving the life.

“You know how it is, Sam. You left. For a while anyway. Before I dragged you back. You ever think about that, how your life would have been different -- normal -- if I hadn’t come to Palo Alto looking for you that night?”

“Dean, you didn’t drag me back. Well, you _did_ but you know what I mean. Other… _things_ mean I would have come back anyway.” Sam sighs, taking a moment to gather his thoughts. “Look, I’ve left enough times to know how it feels to think you don’t have control over your life. I left for Stanford because I wanted to go to school and get an education, and I don’t regret that part of it, I really don’t. And I don’t think I should. But I also left because I didn’t want to do what was put in front of me _just_ because it was put in front of me. You know Dad, he was never one to explain the plan. Just told us our part in it and expected us to go along.”

“Yeah kinda sick of plans these days,” Dean mutters under his breath.

“You’ve never left.”

“Hmm?”

“I left for college, spent _years_ away. I ran off to California again when we were looking for Dad, for what, one whole day? I left a few weeks ago, so sure I was out that I burned everything after like a few hours. But you’ve been doing this your whole life. You’ve never left.”

“No, Sam, I haven’t. I like hunting. I like _being_ a hunter. Remember when we used to just go around killing monsters? I liked doing that. Yeah, maybe sometimes Dad rode us too hard, but most of the time I was glad to be doing good, helping people, letting them live their lives and not think about the shit _we_ think about.”

“You like doing something that’s so bad you’d sacrifice yourself to prevent someone else from experiencing it?”

“Yeah Sam, I do. I would. I _do_. What I don’t like is being the Sword of Michael. What I don’t like being told by a bunch of divine dickbags that I have to choose between killing my brother and letting the entire fucking world die!” Dean’s voice has been getting louder, and by the end of the sentence he’s practically shouting.

Sam lets Dean stew for a bit and calm himself down before speaking again. “Like you said, Dean, are those really the only options? What would you do if it was up to you?

“I’d be done with this damn hole.”

“You know what I mean.”

Dean jabs the shovel into the hard dirt and starts digging.

\-----------------------

Hours pass, the sun sets, and Sam and Dean have finally chiseled a deep enough crack in the earth to haul this damn chest in and never think about it again. Dean wants to roll it in -- who gives a shit if it lands upright? -- but as the responsible one Sam insists they do it right and actually pick the thing up and place it down. As they’re shovelling chips of dirt back into the hole, Dean sees Cas slowly, silently making his way through the moonlit rubble and shoos him over.

“Would you like me to move that for you?” Cas asks, turning his gaze toward the rusty dryer.

“ _Yes_ thank you,” Dean whines shamelessly. “It’s heavy.”

“Wait Cas, where’s Conrad?”

“He’s inside, Sam, asleep. Passed out actually. I believe Conrad may have a drinking problem.” 

“Yeah, well, he’s a hunter.” Dean supplies, the “no shit” unspoken but definitely still there.

“ _You’re_ a hunter.” 

The “no shit” continues to hang in the air.

“You wanna…” Dean gestures between the dryer and the hole, desperate to change the subject and get his brother and the angel to stop looking at him like that. Instead, Cas remains still, staring at Dean with a critical squint. “You gonna move this thing or are we standing out here all night?”

Cas puts a hand on a corner of the dryer and calmly tips it into place, dust puffing into the air to deposit one final layer of grime onto the Winchesters. Sam and Dean hold their breath for a moment waiting for the air to clear, then Dean turns wordlessly and starts back to the Impala.

“I thought we were on vacation,” Sam says flatly.

When they get to the car the brothers strip down as much as they can without breaking any decency laws New Mexico might have on the books. They’re sweaty and gross and dirt is caked in all kinds of unpleasant places, and even though Dean and Sam are well versed in roughing it neither of them wants to try and sleep tonight without taking a shower. All that aside, they’re not about to stay here; they’ve slept in countless _actual_ graveyards, but the idea of sleeping in front of this weird appliance graveyard is too much even for them. Congrats Conrad, you’re somehow worse than half the things the Winchesters have salted and burned.

The brothers are dirty enough that Dean’s pretty sure not even the scuzziest of motel clerks is going to rent them a room, but they need to rent a room in order to clean up. Looks like it’s time for plan B, and it doesn’t take them too long to find signs advertising a new subdivision going up on the outskirts of the city. Dean slowly guides the Impala down a street that’s half-completed construction and empty lots, his head on a swivel until he finally sees what he’s looking for.

The lone completed house at the end of the street is draped in those little triangle flags that Dean’s always associated with the grand openings of pizza joints. They’re probably colorful in the light of day, but tonight it’s way too dark for them to be anything but dreary. A big sign staked into the brand new sod of the front yard cheerfully asks folks to “Take a look inside!”

“Aw look Sammy, we’re being invited in,” Dean jokes with a smile while continuing a few hundred yards past the spec home before pulling over to park. Getting out, Sam and Dean each grab a duffle of clothes and start to quickly decide who’s going to pick the lock, which door, and all the other details you need to work out while breaking and entering. Just as they’re about to start walking toward the house -- walk, don’t run, keep your head down and face away from where security cameras are likely to be -- Cas stops Dean and then Sam with a hand on each of their shoulders. Before they can say anything, the brothers find themselves standing in a dark living room, their boots pushing deep dusty imprints into the previously pristine carpet.

Dean groans and sways a little while Sam thanks Cas for the ride, then walks over to the kitchen sink and turns the tap to test that not only is there water, there’s _hot_ water. Sam nods his head and Dean puts a fist up, preparing to rock-paper-scissors it for who gets first shower, but instead of raising his own fist Sam just gets this smartass look on his face and says “You know, there are probably two.” This revelation -- really, that’s what it is, it’s like the heavens opened up and he heard angels sing -- has Dean way too excited to bother calling Sam out on his sass. 

Sam heads to the back of the house, looking for the master bath, and Dean pokes his head into the various doors off the hallway until he finds the other bathroom. “Awesome,” he says quietly to himself. Dean turns the shower to full blast, tries to make as little mess as possible while stripping down, and gets in. He didn’t turn on the light since it would draw unwanted attention, but there’s enough moonlight streaming in from the window that he’s not totally groping around in the dark. 

They don’t do this a whole lot, breaking into real actual homes to sleep or take a quick shower. On the surface it’s because they do enough shady shit that it’s a good idea not to add any extra reason for the authorities to take notice. How fuckin’ dumb would it be to be the guy who’d beheaded a hundred vamps no questions asked but gets pinched because he turned the light on while taking a crap. But even more than that, Dean just doesn’t feel right in these houses. It feels invasive in a way that goes far beyond the definition of trespassing.

When Cas zapped him into this home, Dean’s first thought was that he was probably ruining the carpet, just by standing on it. It feels weird, _off_ , to be in a home like this, especially when he doesn’t have the layer of false civility that his FBI suit provides. He’s here as himself, as Dean Winchester, as a hunter and a brother and a person who lives out of his car. 

But god _damn_ does this completely normal shower in a perfectly average starter home feel _luxurious_ . Maybe it’s because he gets ten whole minutes under the hot water instead of the five it would be if he had to split time with Sam (best to be in and out as quickly as possible when you’re trespassing), or because the water pressure is doing some amazing things to his sore shoulders. Or maybe the bar is just _real_ fuckin’ low. All day out in that damn junkyard Dean was getting whiffs of Detroit, but now all he smells is the simple clean of whatever stolen motel soap he’s lathering up with.

It would be nice to feel like this all the time, wouldn’t it? To come home after a hard hunt to a house with a shower and towels and soap and clean carpet you can stand on without worry. What a thought. To do what you like -- save people, be helpful, be useful -- and still get to sleep the night in your own bed...

Time finally up, Dean rinses off and steps out, drying himself quickly with a clean t-shirt before throwing on some sweats. Fuck if he’s putting jeans back on right now. Sam’s waiting by Cas with a dazed smile on his face, cheeks flushed from the almost-too-hot water Dean knows he prefers. “Dude, I didn’t even have to slouch to get under the showerhead!”

“Are you ready, Dean?” Cas asks, hand outstretched to grasp Dean’s arm.

“Yeah. No! Wait hold on.” Dean drops his boots to the floor and slips his feet inside, not bothering to tie them. “‘Kay.”

And with a lurch he’s back outside next to Baby. You know what though? Baby’s home too, and Dean feels a little guilty for letting himself think about one that doesn’t move with him.

It only takes 10 minutes of driving to find the turnoff to the campground. It’s really nothing more than a cleared plot of desert with a few ancient grills and a depression in the middle that maybe one day, long ago, used to be a firepit. Dean pulls the Impala to one side, puts it in park, shuts off the engine, and leans his head back against the seat, eyes already closed. 

Sam gets out -- slowly -- and starts to crawl into the backseat where he always sleeps when they do this. “Ah crap, sorry Cas, forgot you were there.”

“It’s alright, Sam. Do you need me to move?”

“Uh yeah, that would be good.”

Dean hums from the front seat, already closer to asleep than awake. “Sorry Cas. Didn’t think… ‘S usually just th’ two of us. Don’t have a house for you.”

“It’s fine, Dean, I can wait outside.” 

“...Aren’t any moths.”

“No,” Cas agrees with a smile, “But there are plenty of stars.”

Dean has slid over onto the bench seat, arms crossed over his chest, and he is so close to sleep when he feels Baby jostle slightly. Normally that sort of thing would have him bolt upright and ready to chop something’s head off, but this time he knows it’s fine because Cas is out there. Cracking an eye for the last time that night, Dean sees Cas lean back against the windshield, face pointed to the sky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Promise much more Cas in the next chapter; he kind of got put on Conrad babysitting duty.


	5. Backroads to Far Towns

It hasn't been physically comfortable for Dean to sleep in the Impala since he was 12 or 13. How Sam can sleep through the night in the car, laying down in a space that's a whole foot too short for him, Dean will never know. But the gentle snores coming from the back tell him that Sam's got it all figured out. 

Dean stirs, taking in a deep lungfull of the car’s stuffy air and stretching his limbs as best he can under the circumstances. Laying down, he can't see anything but sky when he looks outside, recognizing the fresh blue of early morning. It's pretty, sure, but he wouldn't have minded another hour or two. That's the other problem about sleeping in a car: the fucking sun'll get ya every time.

His neck and shoulders are starting to yell at him and his lower back is doing all sorts of unpleasant things, so Dean resigns himself to now being awake and, as quietly as he can, gets up and out of the Impala. Like every hunter they’ve ever known, Sam is both a light and heavy sleeper -- sixth sense waking him on a dime when something’s creeping up on him, but also able to sleep whenever and wherever the opportunity arises. Sam doesn’t react when Baby’s door squeaks exactly the way Dean knew it would, but Dean winces anyway.

The sounds of the Impala, the halting breath of one brother working his way through a quiet nightmare, the rhythmic late-night shuffle through staticky TV channels because the other can’t sleep. These are the things the Winchesters have learned to sleep through during a lifetime on the road. It’s the smaller sounds that can only come from something intruding in the dark of night that have them clutching for the butt of a gun or the grip of a knife. At first the rustle of feathers was on that list, but it hasn’t been for a while now.

Slowly rolling his sore shoulders and gripping and untensing fists that are still very much aware of having been curled around a shovel all day yesterday, Dean looks across the top of the Impala and out over the desert. Off a long ways away, Castiel stands statue still, back to Dean, just existing in the desert. The nearby mountains are glowing red in the morning sun, and Cas looks even more out of place than usual, a guy in a trenchcoat and an ill-fitting suit. It’s haunting in a way, but yeah, it also kinda looks like a shitty Don Henley album cover. Dean grumbles to himself for ruining the moment with  _ that _ image and starts walking toward Cas.

It’s brisk out here, cold in that unexpected way that deserts can be and that always throws him off. It was hot as fuck out here yesterday, how can it be cold now? Sam probably knows but Dean’s not about to ever ask. He wraps his arms around himself, wishing he’d grabbed his jacket, and hunches over a little, his sore legs adding a slight hobble to his step. He’s not old, doesn’t think of himself that way, but his joints and his stiff muscles have him thinking maybe he ought to reconsider.

“Hey Cas, what’d you do last night?”

“Hello, Dean.” Cas looks pleased to have been asked, proud even. “I looked at the stars for a few hours and then, do you have any idea how many scorpions there are here? Many, many more than I was expecting.”

“You spent the night hunting for scorpions?” Dean glances around, a little worried that a bunch of them are about to start climbing up his leg.

“I didn’t hunt for them, they were simply here. And quite interesting.”

“Oh uh, what’s interesting about them?” He’s not really sure he needs or wants to know what exactly is interesting about a scorpion, but maybe it would be nice for Cas to be able to share it with someone. Maybe he’s come up with some profound insight about nature or whatever during his countless nights awake while the rest of the world sleeps.

“Well Dean, they’re very small.”

That’s not exactly what Dean was expecting and he doesn’t have a response prepared, so he just stands there soaking up the golden sunlight that’s finally cutting through the early morning chill and warming his back.

Cas takes the silence as concern though, turning away from the shadows he’s been watching crawl up the mountainside and looking instead at a Dean who determinedly does  _ not _ look back when Cas places a gentle hand on his arm. “I didn’t wander far; you were always safe,” Cas reassures, somehow serious and earnest and off-hand all at once in that way that only he can be.

At that, Dean smiles down at Cas, then  _ keeps _ smiling down at Cas, and yeah they’re staring at each other and Cas still hasn’t moved his hand and damn, Dean thinks, this is awkward. He wishes that it would stop being awkward, but he’s not sure if he means that he wishes Cas would move his hand and Dean would look away or that they could stay here like this while the awkwardness blows on by and leaves them alone in the desert together.

Dean wrinkles his eyebrows at these conflicting thoughts, clears his throat, finally looks away. “Uh yeah… man I could go for some coffee.”

Cas tilts his head and then with the sound of invisible wingbeats, he’s gone and Dean’s arm is suddenly cold where Cas’ warm hand had been draped over it. A moment later he returns holding a disposable cup with “Gas-n-Sip” written on the side which he dutifully hands to Dean.

“Oh hey, I didn’t mean you had to go get me some.”

“It’s alright Dean, I’m happy to do it.” And now Cas is smiling up at Dean. How did they get like this again so quickly, right back to what Dean had so lamely run away from? Dean has this stupid thought to put his hand on Cas’ arm, to complete the mirror image of before, but before he can Cas is telling him something about money.

“Hmm?”

“I don’t have any money.”

“That’s… okay, Cas.” Dean takes a cautious sip from the cup in his hand. In his experience, gas station coffee is almost always either room temperature or only slightly cooler than actual hellfire. That Cas somehow managed to find the one Gas-n-Sip in the country that serves a decent cup is more miraculous than the fact that Dean just had an actual angel bring it to him.

“I need to pay for your beverage. The man is waiting.”

“The...? Oh _ shit _ did he see you leave? Like, disappear?”

“Yes. I told him I’d be right back.”

“No yeah, you can’t go back there.” 

“But Doug will think I lied to him. Or,” genuine worry flashes across Cas’ features, “that I stole from him.”

“It’s alright,  _ Doug  _ has other things to worry about. Like how he just shit himself at work because some guy fucking disappeared into thin air.”

Castiel doesn’t say anything.

“Buddy, you gotta start using doors.” Dean gives a sidelong glance to his friend and has to fight against the smile that plays at his lips when he sees how devastated Cas looks about the whole thing. Stretching one last time, warm inside and out and feeling truly awake now, Dean gestures over at the Impala with a tilt of his head. “We should head back, see if Sam’s up yet. And thanks for the coffee, Cas.”

With the drape of an arm across the other man’s shoulders, Dean guides Cas out of his thoughts and back to the waiting car.

\------------------------

“Dean, pull over. I want to talk to that bird.”

“What?”

They’ve been on the road for a couple of hours, gas station breakfast balanced half eaten on Dean’s thigh. He’s fiddling with the tape deck and trying not to knock the thing that’s supposed to be a sausage biscuit down into the footwell, so it takes a moment for him to process what the hell Cas has just said. When he swivels his head around to fix Castiel with a stare, the backseat is already empty and he can see the distinctive shape of Cas’ trenchcoat crouched at the side of the road.

Sam’s got that faraway look of resigned confusion on his face, like this is just his life now, and lets out a simple “huh” while Dean slows the Impala and eases her onto the wide shoulder.

“He wanted to talk to that bird,” Dean says matter-of-factly while staring straight ahead, then opens the door and hauls himself out into the oppressive heat. “Fuck me…” Dean hastily peels off his jacket, and then after a moment’s hesitation his flannel as well. This from a guy who routinely stands four feet away from blazing funeral pyres wearing three layers and a popped collar. It’s fucking  _ hot _ out here.

Dean and Sam walk back toward Cas but slow when they see that yeah there is definitely a bird over there and Cas looks like he is definitely talking to it. His mouth isn’t moving, but his face has the same intensity and focus it does when he’s listening to a local sheriff try to make sense of the unexplainable. Still crouched down, Cas and the bird seem like they’re about the same size, which wow, that is one big-ass bird. Maybe it’s an eagle?

“I think that’s a condor!” Sam’s a bit breathless, like seeing this huge black bird is a major event. They’re close enough now to see that this is definitely  _ not  _ an eagle, its head featherless and covered in wrinkly pink and yellow skin that looks surprisingly soft. Shiny black feathers bloom abruptly from the base of the bird’s long bare neck and cover the rest of its body, like an old woman wrapped in a huge black fur coat. Simply put, Dean is looking at an absolutely enormous vulture.

“So uh, does it have a name?” Dean feels like an idiot just asking, but what the hell else is he supposed to do with this?

Cas stands up and looks over at Dean, squinting with surprise that Dean would even have to ask. “No Dean, it’s a bird.”

Dean looks up from the condor and over at Cas and sees that something about his stance has shifted. Cas is always stiff, never really looks relaxed, doesn’t have much body language to speak of, but there’s something different about his shoulders. They look sort of slumped, but not from fatigue or disappointment. If not for the fact that there was clearly nothing there, Dean would say they looked like they were bearing a heavy weight, like maybe a backpack or something. But no, there’s nothing on Cas’ back other than his trenchcoat and that shadow. Where’s that shadow coming from? Shadow means shade and shade means blessed relief from the relentlessly blazing sun. Dean glances around for a tree that isn’t there, then up into the sky thinking a lone cloud must have drifted in front of the sun, but all that’s there is blinding white-blue.

He sees movement in the corner of his eye, something black pushing outwards to fill more of his peripheral vision, and hears Sam gasp in reverence. The condor, still on the ground in front of Cas, has opened up its wings, revealing their unexpected white undersides. It’s not flapping them or raising them above its body or doing anything threatening or particularly awesome, but it’s majestic nonetheless simply because the wings are so  _ big _ . This thing must have a ten-foot wingspan.

They’re the largest wings Dean has ever seen until they’re not.

The shadow that had been wrapped over Castiel’s back starts to move and Dean takes an involuntary step back from where he’d been standing shoulder-to-shoulder with him, staring at this weird dimness that’s somehow starting to seem tangible. It’s like the absence of light is itself a material thing. Dean flashes back to that night in the barn when he saw the shadow of Castiel’s wings; it had been hard to say how big they actually were because shadows are tricky like that and also Dean was busy kinda freaking out inside, but Dean thinks maybe he’s about to find out.

When they finally do solidify, Cas’ wings are such a deep, dark black that it hurts to look at them. For a split second he’s worried he’s about to have his eyes burned out of his skull in some sort of divine accident, but Dean quickly realizes that what’s causing his throbbing headache is the contrast. The sun is so bright out here that at first the sudden appearance of this wall of blackness is too much for his brain to handle. As his eyes adjust, though, Dean sees that the wings aren’t just a dark mass, like someone cut twin holes in the universe right over his friend’s back. The wings  _ are _ black, but they’re also a deep sapphire blue and emerald green and amethyst and even a deep bronze-y gold. “It’s an oil slick,” Dean says quietly to himself as he absentmindedly reaches a hand toward the wing in front of him. Castiel’s wings are the same color as the black rainbows in parking lot puddles that used to delight Dean when he was a kid, and they seem just as fluid too.

As Castiel brings his wings up and out and away from his body, mimicking the pose of the condor sunning itself in front of him, they brush against Dean’s still outstretched hand. The feathers are warm to the touch, smooth and stiff as they move under Dean’s fingers. Once Cas has extended his wings to their full span, he holds them there for what might have been a few seconds or a few minutes, Dean’s too mesmerised to really know.

On the ground, the condor is apparently not impressed at all by what it’s just seen. It flaps its wings a few times and clumsily lifts itself up into the air, drifting up and away from the three men with slow, lazy wingbeats.

“Thank you, Dean,” Cas says simply, holding Dean’s gaze while he folds his wings back behind him, feathers brushing against Dean’s hand and arm. Without saying another word, he turns and walks back to the car, wings losing their luster and solidity and fading out of sight. By the time he’s back at the Impala they’re completely gone.

“Holy shit,” Sam says from where he’s been standing, a little behind Dean. Honestly he had forgotten Sam was there, though to be fair he’d momentarily forgotten pretty much  _ everything _ when Cas had revealed his wings. Sam is wide-eyed and smiling that huge, nervous, excited smile that makes him look 12 again. “They uh, the angels are... really angels huh?”

“Yeah.  _ Fuck _ .” Sam and Dean stand there and gawp at nothing for a little longer before making their way over to the Impala where Cas waits for them. Normal, boring, trenchcoated, incredible, divine Cas.

Dean wonders for the first time what Michael’s wings look like. Or Lucifer’s.

\------------------------

They’ve been driving a black car through the desert, and for the second time ever Dean is wishing he could change something about his Baby (the first time was when he realized it’d be so much easier to peel out in the parking lot to impress Rhonda Hurley if the Impala had a manual transmission). It’s not like they’ve never driven though hot weather before or had to crank the air conditioning, but this is something else. Hot air is rippling above the blinding asphalt, creating shimmery waves of heat that always manage to stay ahead of them no matter how far or fast they drive. Flat, monotonous landscapes are nothing new -- Dean’s criss-crossed this country more times than he could ever hope to count -- but something about the high desert of the Southwest is ominous and grand. It’s awesome, Dean realizes, but not in the way he usually means it.

Yesterday things had been brown, but today they’re red: the dirt, the rocks, the low barely-there hills that only register because everything else is so flat. Even the layer of haze that hangs in the air is red, little pieces of the desert itself kicked up by wind and twisted into columns by some of the biggest dust devils Dean has ever seen. Without the haze it would have been striking, that sharp contrast between red and bright cloudless blue, but instead it makes the sky seem like an extension of the land. It reminds Dean of the smoky glow he’d seen in the apocalypse of that future Detroit, a sort of vision within a vision of Lucifer wearing Sam’s face and reveling in the destruction he’d wrought.

“Dean.”

“What?” Dean shakes off the memory of that cold, too stiff Sam-who-wasn’t-Sam and makes himself look over at his younger brother. Sam is folded up in the seat, knees straining at the fabric of his jeans. He’s gangly and kind of goofy and looks so wonderfully like  _ himself _ .

“I said since we’re out here we should go back to the Grand Canyon, see it properly.”

“What do you mean ‘back’? We’ve never been to the Grand Canyon.”

“What are you talking about? We went when I was four. Dad took us.”

Dean shrugs and shakes his head at Sam, giving him the universal gesture of  _ don’t know what to tell ya, don’t really care _ .

“Do you really not remember that?”

“Sam, it’s a hole in the ground. It’s not gonna be that memorable.”

Sam looks at Dean like this is, quite possibly, the stupidest thing Dean has ever said. He might be right. Cas seems to agree, but his voice is softened by recollection instead of edged with judgement when he pipes up. “Dean, the Grand Canyon is extremely memorable. And it is not,” and Dean can hear the air quotes even if he doesn’t see them, “a ‘ _ hole in the ground _ .’ Not like the one I made anyway.”

“What?”

Castiel sighs from his place in the back seat. “I… dropped something.  _ Once _ . And Gabriel never missed an opportunity to laugh at me about it. You’d think after 50,000 years he could have thought of another joke.”

“Who’s Gabriel?” Sam asks at the same time Dean asks “Where is it?”

Cas either ignores Sam or doesn’t hear him. Instead he pauses to tune into his angel GPS, or whatever it is he uses to land with pinpoint accuracy three inches behind Dean, then announces “23 and a half miles from here.”

“Dude, I want to see your hole!”

Sam’s eyebrows shoot up as he silently tilts his face toward Dean.

“I want to see the hole in the ground Cas made!” Dean quickly corrects, a little too loud and a little too shrill.

“Well, continue ahead,” Cas says as the Impala passes a large sign advertising the “Barringer Meteor Crater National Landmark and Visitor Center, next right.”

Turns out Castiel’s hole in the ground is kind of a big deal. 

It doesn’t look like much as they drive up to it, so it comes as a surprise when Dean realizes that they’re at the rim of a mile-wide 600-foot-deep crater smack in the middle of nowhere. It’s like someone scooped a huge spoonful out of the desert. Not someone,  _ Cas. _

There’s a squat white building built right on the south rim of the crater, a few picnic tables out front and a parking lot with most of its spaces clearly painted for tour buses. Today things seem pretty slow, but there’s one bus and a couple of those rentable RVs parked in the sparse shade.

“Cas, they built a visitor’s center for your hole.”

The first time Dean had called it “Cas’ hole” had been a genuine slip -- one that had mortified him -- but now he’s playing it up because he’s nervous and overwhelmed, and when he gets nervous and overwhelmed he gets obnoxious. The fact that Cas doesn’t seem to get the jokes  _ at all _ and keeps replying with things like “Yes, Dean, my hole is very popular” only encourages him to double down. Sam’s disapproving “I can’t believe I’m related to you  _ and _ that you’re the older one” looks are also helping, thank you very much.

As they walk around, Dean is clearly having a hard time deciding which he wants his face to express: annoyance at Sam’s incredible nerdiness, or awe at Castiel’s creation. He wavers back and forth but settles on awe when he realizes he can get answers to all the questions he desperately wants to ask but won’t by just letting Sam do his “Get this!” Sam thing. Under different circumstances Dean would roll his eyes and pretend (or not) that he didn’t care at all about whatever Sam is yapping about. This time, though, things are different. He wouldn’t just be rolling his eyes at Sam, he’d be rolling them at Cas too, and he simply can’t bring himself to do that. 

After looking around the visitor’s center and ogling the 1,400 pound meteorite (Cas shakes his head sadly when he touches it) they head back outside to get a better look at the crater. Walking along the trail that follows part of the rim, Dean listens to Castiel talk about geologic timescales in a casual way that makes him uncomfortably aware of his own fleeting and very human existence. When they reach the end of the path, they take a few minutes to stand there and admire the view and that’s when Dean realizes how fucking  _ exhausted _ he is.

He watches the sun starting to set over the western edge of the crater, a mirror image of this morning, the same but reversed, then turns to head back.

\------------------------

They have to walk through the gift shop to get back to the parking lot. Normally Dean wouldn't pay much attention to any of the stuff these places sell -- kind of hard to collect souvenirs when you don't have a home to keep them in. Anyway, he just wants to get back to the car and sit down and maybe close his eyes for a minute or two, but as they're meandering past the shelves of cheap plastic dinosaurs and My First Telescopes, something catches Dean's attention. It's a small basket filled with tiny black balls, most of them no bigger than a nickel. They're cratered, like little moons made of glass, the pockmarks revealing shiny obsidian while the smoother parts of the surface are a deep dull grey. A sign next to the basket reads "Tektites, $5" and explains that these little balls of glass were made at the same time as the crater.

"Cas!" Dean grabs the arm of his friend's trenchcoat and pulls him back toward the basket. "Cas,  _ you made these _ ."

Castiel squints down at the basket for a moment, working out what he’s looking at. "Oh. It wasn’t intentional, but yes I suppose I did."

“They’re the same color as your wings.”

Dean looks at Cas with open awe for the third time that day, his gaze lingering on the angel's face long enough for Dean to blush a little when he realizes what he's doing and looks away. His hand hovers over the Tektites as he surveys them as thoroughly as he can while still being quick about it, picking up a couple of them and turning them over in his palm. He looks back up at Cas, who's watching with warmth in his eyes, and then back down at his work.

"Gotta pick the best one," he explains while plucking one of the tektites up and letting the others roll back into the basket, then winks at Cas and walks over to the register. 

Cas stands where Dean left him, looking fondly at the basket full of his accidental handiwork. As Dean heads back towards him and continues on his way to the door, he hears a quiet "Perhaps it wasn’t a mistake after all."

“Nope, you did good Cas.” Dean slips the bit of glass into his pants pocket and pats it for good measure.

They’ve got another couple of hours on the road, but Dean’s already forgotten that he was ever tired.


	6. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

They cross into Nevada late that night and crash at the first motel they find, some shithole in Henderson with rooms so cheap even  _ Dean _ hesitates. The glow of the Strip is a bright fluorescent dome over the northeastern sky, but here on the outskirts the streetlamps have the golden glow of someplace older, more familiar. It doesn’t even occur to Dean to drive into the heart of Vegas and stay somewhere nicer; even when the whole point is to relax and treat himself, it feels wrong to stay somewhere with soft sheets and too many other guests. So instead, they spend another night hovering on the edges of civilization where they’ll go unnoticed.

The next morning, Dean wakes to filtered sunlight and the hushed tones of an infomercial jingle. Castiel is sitting at the foot of Dean’s bed, weight bowing the worn out mattress, face way too close to the boxy TV. In the snowy picture, Ron Popeil makes beef jerky or something while the studio audience oohs and ahhs. Dean turns toward the other bed -- careful not to move too much and disturb Cas’ trance -- and sees that Sam is awake too and watching Cas with the same good humored confusion Dean felt. Glancing at his brother, Sam shrugs and lets out a silent chuckle.

“So, whatcha watchin’ there, Cas?”

“The television, Dean.”

“Yeah I can see that, I mean what show?” As Dean asks, the channel number flashes in the corner, and he realizes it’s the same one Cas was watching when Dean crawled into bed the night before. In fact, Cas doesn’t look like he’s moved at all. “Hey, did you watch TV all night?”

“Yes. This man has invited all these hungry people to eat the food he’s preparing for them.” Cas gestures at footage of a housewife who is way too excited about a bowl of perfectly chopped vegetables. “It’s very generous of him.”

A short squawk of laughter bursts from the other bed before Sam can clamp his mouth shut, and Cas finally pulls himself away from the television. 

“Cas, Buddy, that guy’s just hawking kitchen appliances. Those people are all being paid to be there and act like whatever’s in front of them is the best thing they’ve ever eaten. It’s a commercial.”

“Oh.” Cas looks like someone gently punched him in the stomach, like he’s not hurt, just disappointed. “This is more of the lying, like with the prostitute.”

Dean gives himself the briefest of moments to enjoy the confused discomfort Sam is radiating from the other bed, then gets back to feeling like shit even though it’s not like he’s the one who decided humans should lie to each other all the time. “Yeah, sorry.”

The silence gets weird and Sam is shifting around like a man angling for first shower, which  _ no fuckin’ way _ , and suddenly Dean is done lazing around and just wants to be up and moving and doing something. “Hey Cas, so I gotta get up now.” When Cas doesn’t move, Dean prods at him with a foot until he gets the hint and stands.

\---------------------------

The room might be terrible, but by some blessing the shower is actually decent and there’s enough hot water for both brothers to take their time, Sam taking his turn now while Dean putters around and finishes dressing. He’s got his jeans and boots on already, pulls on something with long sleeves and then shrugs into something  _ else _ with long sleeves, and straps a knife to his ankle. It’s while he’s checking the magazine on his gun that he realizes he’s been arming for a hunt, not for the vacation that he’s supposed to be on. He makes himself put the gun back down on the bed instead of where he wants to tuck it in his waistband and takes a moment to look himself over. Gun or no gun, vacation or not, he knows it’s got to be a fucking furnace outside and even Dean Winchester’s patented ability to grit his teeth and bear just about anything might not be enough in the face of 110 degree weather. Alright so, that’s the flannel gone but it still leaves him with a long-sleeved henley. He reluctantly pulls it off and digs around in his duffle for a decent short-sleeved shirt he’s pretty sure doesn’t exist. All he comes up with is a worn and faded Spinal Tap shirt that’s theoretically for sleeping but hasn’t been worn in a while since Dean seems to crash in his clothes most nights now.

It’s wrinkled from being balled up at the bottom of his stuff and it doesn’t smell very fresh, but he knows it’s clean so it’ll have to do. Pulling it on, Dean tugs here and there at the sleeves and waist; it’s not that the shirt doesn’t fit, it’s just that it doesn’t feel right. In addition to the general vulnerability that comes with not being armored in layers -- vulnerability that he is absolutely  _ not _ about to examine -- Dean doesn’t like to wear short sleeves anymore because that handprint Cas left on his shoulder peeks out a little. Dean doesn’t care about the scar itself -- hunting’s not exactly a great career choice for anyone who’s bothered by scars -- it’s just that catching glimpses of it in reflections or noticing when someone’s gaze has drifted to it make the conflicting oceans of guilt and gratitude and shame and relief swirl up inside him. And on top of it all there’s a caring that twists his gut (he’s pretty sure now that it’s more than caring, maybe a lot more).

Nope, not thinking about that right now.

Dean yanks the sleeve down one last time, resolutely not looking over at Cas. “Jesus Sam, how long does it take you to brush your princess hair?” he shouts at the closed bathroom door.

A muffled “I’m not brushing it!” sounds through the door before Sam exits, half dressed and hair looking suspiciously shiny. Dean gives it a scrutinizing look before examining the watch that is not on his wrist. “Yeah yeah...” Sam grumbles, quickly throwing on a shirt with none of the touchy-feely crap that  _ of course _ Dean had to deal with. How the hell did Sam end up so well adjusted?

Blinking hard to force himself back into the mood to have fun -- it’s not hard; he’s been excited about this since he passed that billboard on 395 on the way back from a haunting in Bodie a couple years back -- Dean turns to Cas. “So, you ready to experience some Star Trek?” 

“Of course, Dean.” Cas pauses and watches intently while Sam locks the flimsy front door behind them. “What are we about to experience?”

Before Dean can answer, Sam chimes in. “See Cas, something you need to know about my brother is that every time he complains about me being a huge nerd he’s leaving something out. He also is a huge fucking nerd.”

There is no rebuttal for this and Dean knows it. In different circumstances he might be able to scrounge something up, but they’re on their way to go spend the day pretending a bunch of guys in rubber masks are aliens and it’s all Dean’s idea. “Alright fine, yes. I am.”

“Ha, got you!” The burst of laughter that comes out of Sam’s stupid face is long and loud and it would be awesome if he’d stop now. When he finally does, he remembers why they’re having this conversation in the first place and gets back down to business. “So Cas, it’s this show---”

“More than one show.”

“Okay  _ shows _ about---”

“Also movies.”

“ _ About people on space ships _ \---”

“One of them’s a space station.”

“ _ DEAN _ .”

Dean lets Sam butcher his Cliff’s Notes version of the original Star Trek, but he only lasts so long. Goddammit, nerd things always sound worse when someone who’s not really a fan is talking about them. “Sam,” Dean cuts him off with a wave of the hand, “You’re making it sound stupid!”

“It  _ is _ stupid.”

“Well, okay fine. But it’s good though too. Shut up,” Dean says to the face Sam’s making, then turns to directly address Cas. “So yeah, that’s the first show. And then there was another one in the late 80s with Captain Picard, it was on all the time when we were kids and had the best character, Data, and---”

"Wait, I thought Kirk was your favorite."

"Uh well y-yeah,” Dean’s mouth works a little, “but I mean  _ Data _ . He's got that whole 'I don't understand how humans work' thing going on."

"Uh huh." Sam has a look on his face usually reserved for when Dean's rambling through an increasingly thin cover story, and Dean shoots it back because what the hell?

"He's smart -- the guy knows everything, except for when to laugh at a joke.” Dean gets a far off look in his eyes, a reel of Data’s greatest and most endearing blunders flashing through his mind. “Or how to tell a joke. But he tries."

Sam's urgency is gone and now he's listening patiently, the placid smile on his face making Dean hesitate the way the "you’re so full of shit" look didn't.

“I just like him, alright?"

"Sure." Sam continues to smile.

"He sounds interesting," Cas offers.

Dean shuts up and gets in the car.

\-----------------------------

The Hilton really isn’t far, especially compared to their starting point way back in South Dakota, but the drive takes for _ ever _ . Traffic is a nightmare and there’s construction everywhere, casinos trapped in an endless cycle of destruction and resurrection. There’s plenty to look at, at least, as they inch up the Strip: flashy cars (none as nice as Baby); people in crazy costumes; people in barely  _ any _ costume; and electronic billboards the size of a four-story building. And Jesus, the lights. How are they still this bright even during the day?

They drive past fake New York, fake Rome, fake Paris, fake Egypt. Dean’s all about a good time, but by the time they get to the Hilton he’s got a headache. The noise and clamor of a crowded bar are all fine and dandy, but spending time in one is a means to an end. You go where it’s loud so you can find a friend and go somewhere where it’s a little more quiet. Vegas though, the whole point of it is the volume.

That good humor Dean managed to scrounge up for himself is almost gone by the time the three of them walk into the casino, but he clings to the scraps and after a few minutes has managed a pretty decent welding job on his mood. The air in here is weird -- artificial and processed, but also smoky as hell -- and it’s even more garish inside than it was out on the Strip, but Dean ignores all of that as he heads purposefully to his destination. Up there, ahead, past the high rollers section and a weird massage booth, Dean can see telltale signs of the 24th century. He speeds up, knows he’s grinning, not really a happy smile but more of a fragile “all work and no play makes Dean a dull boy” grimace. He’s so ready for the sense of relief and relaxation -- he’s about to get to do this one stupid fun thing for himself -- that he’s almost angry about it. For a single day he gets to be just some dumbass guy who likes Star Trek, who isn’t an archangel’s vessel, who isn’t expected to burn himself out save the world, who---

Son of a  _ bitch _ .

“Are you  _ FUCK _ ing kidding me.” Dean stops suddenly, Sam and Cas accordianing into him like something out of the Three Stooges.

Here’s the thing about the Star Trek Experience. When it closed it down, the Hilton didn’t gut the part of the casino that had housed it, they just took out all the Star Trek stuff and filled up the empty spaces with slot machines and card tables and other normal Vegas crap. If you didn’t know what you were looking at you’d just think this part of the building had been designed by a guy with an inexplicable hard-on for ovals and neon. Dean, however, is keenly aware that he’s looking at what was once Quark’s Bar, except it isn’t Quark’s anymore. It’s just a regular bar (albeit a strangely designed one) in a regular casino instead of on a space station.

While Dean has a silent breakdown over what is essentially a closed amusement park attraction, Sam reminds the entire world why he’s the smart, reasonable one and walks over to a woman who’s clearing glasses off an empty table. “Excuse me, uh, do you know when this--- when the Star Trek Experience closed?”

“Just about a year now. Gosh, actually I think it’s been almost exactly a year.” She straightens up, her tray piled high with glasses and a few half-filled ashtrays, and looks between Sam and a very forlorn Dean. “You all didn’t come out here to see it did you? Oh man…”

Sam jerks his thumb back at Dean. “My brother wanted to see it, yeah. I know it’s closed, but do you know if there’s anything left over we can take a look at? Maybe pictures or something?” Dean watches as his brother treats the Star Trek Experience like a monster -- well, ghost really -- that they’re trying to track down. Whatever the vacation equivalent is of asking someone if they’d smelled sulfur, Sam’s doing it.

After a bit more conversation between them and a final sympathetic look from the woman to Dean, Sam heads back and gestures toward a back wall. “There’s a little display or something over there. I guess it was a big deal when this place closed down, for the people who worked there anyway.”

They walk over to what is a very homemade but heartfelt tribute to the Star Trek Experience. A few behind-the-scenes pictures, taken with someone’s cheap personal camera and blown up large enough that the details have started to get a little blurry; an old Quark’s Bar menu selling food like “The Wrap of Khan”; attraction tickets, receipts, and other small things; and a plaque that looks like it was made at a local trophy shop. Dean squints down at the closing date -- September 1st, 2008 -- and laughs quietly, bitter but honestly also kind of amused.

“What is it?” Cas asks. He’d walked over to the display with the brothers but was focused on something else.

“This place closed down 17 days before I got out of the pit. Just my luck, man. Missed it by two goddamn weeks.”

Cas looks confused. “You missed it by a year, Dean. If I had liberated you from Hell 17 days sooner, you still would not have come here until today and it still would be closed.” Cas goes silent for a moment, obviously thinking something through. “I could send you back in time if you’d like. Not too far back, but further than last summer. I don’t know what would happen if you were to attempt to be on earth during the time you were in Hell.”

For a minute or two, Dean considers Cas’ offer. He looks around the space trying to mentally recreate the Star Trek Experience, but it doesn’t really work and he suddenly wants to be anywhere but here. And anyway, he’s had more than enough time travel lately, thanks. “Thanks Cas, but nah. So, what do you guys want to do since we’re obviously not doing  _ this _ ?”

Sam thinks for a moment before hesitantly suggesting a trip out to the Hoover Dam, which Dean loudly laughs at before reminding Sam that they drove over top of it last night as they crossed out of Arizona.

"I know, Dean, but I mean  _ visit _ it.” Sam bitchfaces in response to the look Dean’s giving him. “It’s actually pretty cool. Get this: they say the concrete in the core of the dam still hasn't hardened after all this time.”

Dean hums at Sam, the sound asking if he really thought  _ that _ was going to make Dean want to spend his day visiting a dam. 

“ _ Aaaand _ five bodies are trapped inside the structure."

"What?!" Dean takes a quick look over at his brother.

"Yeah, they fell in while the concrete was being poured. I mean, not all at once but..."

"You are a fucking nerd who is going to accidentally find us a job while we're supposed to be on vacation."

"Oh, yeah, good point."

But now Dean’s interest is piqued. "I mean, if there  _ was _ a haunting how would you even salt those guys?"

Done loitering, they start back to the casino entrance. Raising his voice so he can be heard over the  _ CHING CHING CHING  _ of the slot machines, Dean asks “No seriously, what are we doing with the rest of the day?”

Sam sidesteps a group of little old ladies that’s gathered around another little old lady who’s pumping dollar bills into a video poker machine at an alarming rate. “I should probably do something about my IDs. There’s a copy shop a couple miles away that I saw while we were driving in.”

Dean sighs.

“Don’t worry man, I don’t expect you to come with me. It’s gonna take a while; I got rid of  _ everything _ .”

“What am I supposed to do while you’re gone?” Dean asks while handing over the keys.

Sam glances over at Castiel. “You’ll figure it out.”

\-------------------------

They’ve been wandering around the casino for a bit, Cas alternating between openly scrutinizing his surroundings and doing that closed off lost in thought thing he does to file stuff away in his giant angel brain. After a while Cas, who’s back in scrutiny mode, gestures toward a big and very complicated slot machine (maybe?) off to the right. It’s Star Trek themed, has two seats in front of side-by-side screens like those fancy arcade games that Dean always avoided as a kid because they ate through his quarters too fast, and for some reason a Wheel of Fortune wheel is mounted on top of the whole contraption.

“Would you like to play? It has Star Trek.”

“Yeah no. Thanks Cas, but I don’t gamble.”

“You gamble all the time, Dean.”

“I don’t gamble _ at casinos _ . Like, look at this game.” Dean walks over to the blinking monstrosity. “I don’t have a single clue how this thing works -- look how confusing it is! -- but I’m expected to just sit there like gee I hope this thing I have no control over treats me right. And it’s intentional. Everything here is designed to make sure you lose.”

“Then why do people still play?”

“Because everyone feels like they’re the special one, the one who’ll win despite the odds even though they know the game is rigged and that everyone else is stupid for playing. The rules don’t apply to them, right? Even though yeah they definitely fucking do.”

Dean’s worked himself up a bit, looks around a little embarrassed at how loud his voice got, but other than Cas not a single person here is paying any attention to him. They’re all engrossed in whatever they’re doing: throwing craps, laughing with the people around them, smiling, enjoying themselves.

“So they’re doing something wrong by hoping?”

Dean glares at Cas. “Yeah yeah, hope is good, love conquers all, whatever. I’m just saying, there’s being hopeful and then there’s deluding yourself. Goddamn I am fucking starving.” Whatever fight had risen in Dean’s chest has left as quickly as it came and now he just feels hungry. And tired. And like he could use a drink. Dean scans the edges of the cluttered space and gestures Cas toward a generic sit-down burger joint built into a far wall.

It’s fancier than Dean would normally eat at (somewhere in the back of his mind he knows this place isn’t fancy at all, it’s just that his standards are fucked), but the menu has a wide variety of awesome sounding burgers so he’s not complaining. A server in an ugly polo shirt comes up to take their order, and Dean enthusiastically orders a cheeseburger that comes with onion rings on it, a basket of fries, and a beer. Cas says he doesn’t want anything, but before the server leaves Dean orders him a beer anyway.

“I don’t want the beer, Dean.” Cas half-whispers to Dean, leaning in like he’s sharing state secrets with the guy.

“Don’t worry about it, I’m gonna drink it for you.”

The table they’re sitting at is next to the low wall that separates the restaurant from the casino floor. Cas watches as people from all walks of life meander between blackjack and roulette tables. A group of women, probably a bridal party, chatter at a bank of bright neon slot machines in the distance.

“I believe it’s unfair to this place and the people who come here to call it ‘Sin City.’”

“Oh?” Dean’s been trying for about a minute to grab a napkin out of a dispenser that’s been filled way too full and has only succeeded in shredding the top few layers of tissue-thin paper. “Hmm, why’s that, Cas?”

Before Castiel can answer, the server arrives with their food and drinks, then leaves just as quickly.

“These people, flawed though they may be, are simply seeking distraction from a world that is impartial to their suffering, and also to their happiness. They’re creating their own meaning, as is everyone.” Cas pauses for a moment before continuing. “As are the angels, even. We may have knowledge of a broader context, but with God absent for so long our existence is ultimately just as unguided. I believe, given enough lack of purpose, I could seek comfort in the material.”

Dean sets down his burger, somehow already half eaten. “Yeah Cas you, uh, you’re kinda describing future you.” Cas tilts his head in question. “I know I said you were more human, but really you were just… human. I don’t think you were an angel anymore, or you had like one percent angel left.” Dean gets quiet, realization hitting him for the first time. “Dude, your wings, they must have been  _ gone _ . What happens if you, I mean, I knew you had wings but I didn’t think about them as  _ real _ real and---”

“Dean, are you angry at a hypothetical future self for causing me to fall completely?”

“Well  _ yeah _ ! I was before but now that I’ve seen--- your wings are beautiful, man, you can’t lose ‘em.” Dean’s kind of panicking now. “Are you gonna lose them if you stick with us?”

“It wouldn’t be painful, Dean. Well, not physically.” Sometimes Castiel’s honesty is a real pain in the ass.

They both sit for a bit, each lost in thought, Dean drinking down most of his beer in a single pull, before Cas breaks the silence with an incredibly earnest “Really Dean, you liked them?”

“What, your wings? Yeah I liked ‘em! They’re, I mean have you seen those things?”

“Of course I’ve seen them, Dean. They’re mine.”

Dean grins around a couple of steak fries. “Ha ha, Cas.  _ Beautiful _ ’s a girly word and don’t tell Sam I went around calling you beautiful --  _ your wings _ beautiful, but yeah they’re, they’re fuckin’ awesome.”

Castiel smiles, an honest to god toothy smile, all pink gums and wrinkled nose, a smile Dean is absolutely sure he’s never seen on that face before. Cas, who usually stays somewhere in the zero-to-two range, has cranked it all the way up to eleven and it’s radiant. 

Dean reaches over and slides Cas’ beer over to his side of the table where it can add to the warmth that’s already building in his chest. They sit for a while longer, Dean finishing up the basket of fries and downing the second beer. Honestly, Dean would be okay with sitting here for the rest of the day, ordering more food and drinks whenever he feels like it, but the server’s been giving them the stink eye since the moment the last fry disappeared so he figures it’s time to go.

“Is there anything you want to do, Cas?” Dean asks, standing and tossing some cash on the table.

Cas smiles at Dean again, serenely this time, and just says “Other than exactly what I’m doing right now, no.”

Dean feels himself blush a little at that and hopes the slight flush on his cheeks from the beer will cover it up. “Well uh, I’d rather hang out here too but I don’t think our friend over there would be too happy about it. Pretty sure we’ve seen just about everything this casino has to offer -- yeah, not much, I know,” Dean responds to Cas’ confusion, “but the other ones have other stuff. Shopping malls and shows and um, there’s a big fountain that like, is a fountain? Please don’t say the fountain, that sounds so lame. Uhhh, there’s an aquarium I think, and some animatronic thing at Caesar’s and---”

“The aquarium please.”

“Ah, there it is, shoulda known. Come on Cas, let’s go.” Dean claps his hand on the angel’s shoulder. “You can tell me all about the fish.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A couple of notes:  
> \-- The urban legend that there are bodies in the concrete of the Hoover Dam is actually untrue (over 110 people did die during its construction, however), but I figure Sam knows something the rest of us do not.  
> \-- Everything I wrote about the Star Trek Experience is true and accurate. It was AMAZING and I’m genuinely bummed that Dean never got to visit it.  
> \-- I don't recall if the aquarium at Mandalay Bay was around in 2009, but it's really hard to think of things in Vegas that Cas might be into so...  
> \-- Next chapter is the last one!!
> 
> Thanks as always for reading, kudos and comments are appreciated.


	7. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

It takes a while to get to the aquarium. Cas had insisted he could fly them but Dean wanted to take the tram thing because deep down he’s still about eight years old. When the tram finally arrives, Dean's a little disappointed by it -- it’s just two short cars with a walk-through hinge, barely more than one of those extra long buses you see sometimes in big cities -- until he sees how intrigued Cas is by it. "It runs on rails," he explains to Dean, who just smiles. Maybe this is the first time Cas has ever seen a train.

Like everything else in Las Vegas, the aquarium is at a casino. It’s got a different theme -- a too-fancy gold-plated tropical beach kind of thing that reminds Dean of the great injustice that the one place in America that never seems to be haunted is a warm, sunny beach -- but even so it feels remarkably like the one they just left. Dress it up however you want, and this one’s  _ really _ fuckin’ dressed up, but when it comes down to it a casino’s a casino. The two men pick their way through the huge main floor area, weaving in and out of the rows of slot machines that somehow always seem to be blocking their path. Castiel seems less interested in the throngs of people around them; everything is worth seeing, or whatever it was Cas had said back at that diner, but it’s clear he’s had enough of the carefully constructed artifice and just wants to see some damn nature.

Eventually they get to the entrance and Dean does his best to suppress his nausea at just how much the tickets cost. Cas doesn’t seem to notice it, but the young guy behind the counter smirks a little as he takes Dean’s last few twenties. Dean’s concern is quickly forgotten, though, when he gets his first glimpse of Cas gazing happily at a wall of kelp, small colorful fish darting in and out of the deep, swaying green, the dappled lighting reminding Dean just how blue Cas’ eyes can be. 

“ _ Wow _ ,” Dean says as they leave the noise of the casino behind, his voice low to match the dim lighting and close space. This isn't really an aquarium, or at least not how Dean's always imagined them to be. Instead of walls of tanks, each filled with one or two different kinds of fish, the place is a long glass tunnel that gives an uninterrupted view of whatever’s swimming around and above. And man is there a lot swimming around: sharks; sea turtles; some bigass round fish that looks like it’s just a head with no body; and hundreds and hundreds of brightly colored tropical fish darting here and there, swimming in schools, just fuckin’ everywhere. And there’s coral and seaweed and crabs and starfish and weird flowy things stuck to rocks and Dean isn’t sure if they’re plants or animals and just yeah,  _ wow _ .

A few feet ahead of Dean, Cas crouches down and points to a big orange crab that’s been methodically combing through the sand. “Did you know that crabs have evolved, independently, five separate times?” Cas shakes his head. “It’s bewildering.”

“I guess nature just... likes crabs.”

Cas hums, like he’s seriously considering the possibility

Dean doesn’t really care about crabs but he cares about Cas, so he nods along while Cas muses over why nature keeps making crabs. It doesn’t take long, though, for Dean to surprise himself by actually getting invested in what Cas is talking about, and then realizing that he’s not actually surprised at all. Will he still care about crabs tomorrow? Or moths or scorpions or holes in the ground? No, probably not. But he cares now because it’s Cas who’s telling him about it. He wants whatever Castiel wants to give. So he just listens, occasionally adding a small comment here or there that he hopes will keep Cas going.

Standing there together, heads close so Cas can quietly tell Dean everything he knows about everything swimming around and above them, feels intimate in a way that not very much in Dean’s life has. Intimate but easy. Dean doesn’t have to conjure up a grin he doesn’t feel or move with just the right amount of choreographed swagger, doesn’t have to give a fake name or keep his eyes soft or remember not to mention 95% of what makes him Dean Winchester. He doesn’t have to perform. With Cas he couldn’t if he wanted to, which scares Dean to death just as much as it makes him feel alive.

Dean’s lost in thought so it’s a surprise -- even more of a surprise -- when Cas puts his hand on Dean’s shoulder, right on the spot where his handprint is. Because of the way the stupid shirtsleeve has hiked up, the bottom of Cas’ palm makes direct contact with its counterpart, and for a quick moment Dean’s whole body feels like it does after one too many turns on the Magic Fingers: tingly and warm and not totally there. Touch passes between Cas and Dean a lot -- Cas healing Dean, ferrying him places through flight, Dean guiding his friend through human spaces, fixing a collar, and more recently just touching him because it feels nice, because it’s comforting. 

They’ve reached the end of the tunnel; Dean can hear the muffled sounds of slot machines and laughter and clinking glasses invading the hushed quiet of the aquarium behind them. 

Having Cas this close to him used to feel invasive, intimidating, but now it just feels right; Dean looks down at the slightly shorter man and lets his gaze linger on his face. Dean likes to pretend that Cas is the one who does all the staring, and sure okay, maybe Cas’ laserbeam gaze is more intense, but Dean is just as complicit in the eyefucking the two of them have been getting up to since that very first night in the barn. Cas looks like he’s staring into Dean’s soul, and for anyone else that would just be a turn of phrase, but Dean knows Castiel is probably,  _ actually _ , seeing it. Dean’s hooded eyes travel down to Castiel’s lips and he swallows, can’t help it, the tip of his tongue flicks out to swipe over his lips, can’t help that either. The movement finally draws Cas’ eyes away from Dean’s, Dean leans forward just a little more, he’s going to do it, he’s going to kiss Cas, he’s---

The kid bumps into Dean as he runs past the two of them and up towards the exit into the casino, shouting something about sharks to his mom. Dean sucks in a sharp breath through his nose, feeling like he just woke up. Cas has turned his face toward the kid now, his hand slipped down to Dean’s elbow, and the moment’s over.

“Let’s go, man.” Dean gestures toward the exit, then sighs. “I could use a drink.”

\--------------------------

Dean doesn’t think it’s that late in the day, but with the deliberate way casinos avoid any and all indicators of time, he really can’t be sure. It might be late, it might be early, it might be the middle of the goddamn day (okay, Dean knows it’s not the middle of the day because it was the middle of the day when they were outside waiting for the tram a few hours ago). The point is, Dean’s pretty sure he shouldn’t be this drunk at this hour, whatever exactly it is. Not that Dean’s ever really been a guy to turn down a drink on account of the clock, but there’s a difference between slowly nursing a flask all day and letting yourself get hammered when the sun’s still up. Or at least that’s what he tells himself. 

He’d chosen to park himself at one of the ‘overflow’ bars toward the back of the casino, the kind that stay open all day even if they only ever draw crowds at night, and right now it’s just him and the bartender. Downing his latest shot of bourbon, Dean continues the rambling account he's been giving about all the times he’s rebuilt the Impala. Right when he's about to get to a good part about rechroming a fender, Dean stops himself when he catches sight of Castiel standing next to a huge gold urn full of tropical flowers.  _ Fuck _ the decor here is ugly as shit. Cas is just looking appraisingly at the plants, touching a finger gently to a leaf here, a bloom there, getting his face real close to whatever he’s looking at. Everything in this horrible place is moving and making noise and flashing lights and there are three different pop songs competing with each other, and then there’s Cas in his dumb trenchcoat, unmoving in the middle of all this life and commotion, just as still as he was out in the desert.

The bartender, who hadn’t actually shown  _ any _ interest in Dean’s stories, stops wiping down the counter and asks if Dean’s alright and if he needs another drink. As had been happening on and off since Dean sat down, a waitress shows up with some orders from the nearby tables.

“Yeah uh,” Dean jerks a thumb at Cas. “I know that guy.” Dean says it like it’s an accomplishment.

“Yeah?” the bartender asks, not looking over at Cas because he’s too busy making the drinks the waitress came by for.

“He raised me,” Dean explains.

The waitress looks between Dean and the guy Dean’s been gesturing towards, like that can’t be right. “He’s your dad?”

“He pi---” Dean sucks in a hiccupy breath. “He picked me up.”

“...Like a date?”

“No! No, he’s not, we’re not…” Dean trails off, his face falling. He’s never been a weepy drunk but thinks maybe he’d like to try.

A minute later and the waitress leaves with a tray full of drinks, but instead of going back to the tables she makes a detour toward Cas. She says something to him -- they’re too far away for Dean to hear -- and he looks at her, then over to Dean, then back to her. Probably saying thank you. Cas is nice like that.

Dean watches as Cas walks toward him, the angel’s face wearing a small smile, the look of contentment that he gives to Dean and Dean alone.

“Hello, Dean.”

Dean beams at Castiel, then turns toward the bartender. “This is my friend. This is Cas. Cas  _ made _ this!” Dean points the bartender’s attention to the tektite he’s been rolling back and forth across the bar in front of him. The bartender glances briefly down at the little black ball and does not look suitably impressed in Dean’s opinion. “Hey Cas, have a drink with me!”

“Dean, you are already very drunk.”

The bartender chuckles while he messes around with a jar full of weird white things. Eyeballs or something. No, cocktail onions.

“Yeah man, I  _ am _ !” Dean puts his arm around Cas’ shoulder and guides him onto a stool. “C’mon, you should be too!” 

Cas takes a moment to study the very extensive collection of bottles behind the bar -- bottles of all different shapes and sizes, filled with liquids in every color imaginable -- then looks back at Dean’s expectant face. “I’m not sure any of this will be able to get me drunk.”

The bartender snorts at that. Dean asks “Hey, what’s the strongest thing you got?”

“Everclear. The real kind, 190 proof.”

“Ah yeah, jet fuel! My buddy here’ll take the bottle!” Dean claps Cas on the back and gives him a friendly and uncoordinated shoulder bump. Dean’s letting that looseness that comes from being too drunk too early in the day take the reins; if he wanted to he could probably shake it off and clamp everything back down and in place, but for once he doesn’t. He’s in Vegas, they’re not on a job, Sam is -- goddamn, how long does it take to make fake IDs? Whatever. There’s only Castiel, who’s looking at Dean with that inscrutable warmth that he saves just for him, and some bartender who doesn’t know who he is or that he went to Hell or that there’s an apocalypse just over the horizon. 

The bartender eyes Cas in all his rumpled tax accountant glory, probably decides he’s the kind of guy who gets shitfaced on a single Zima. “Uh yeah I really don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Trust me man, this guy can handle it. He’s an  _ angel _ .”

Cas looks surprised that Dean threw that around but doesn’t say anything.

“Look man, sure seems like you think so the way you’re hanging off of him, but I don’t think that’s really the best way to go about this.”

“No I mean he,” Dean turns to look Cas fully in the face, “Hey Cas, Castiel, look at me Cas.” The angel complies, tilting his head back and setting his jaw as he stares directly into Dean’s eyes. Dean tries to hold the stare but quickly finds himself glancing away and then back and then away again and even starts to giggle a little, which causes Cas to squint in confusion which causes Dean to smile broadly. “He’s…  _ Russian _ !” Dean finally turns away from Cas and triumphantly back to the bartender, who’s been watching this extremely unsubtle display with more interest than he’s shown in anything else Dean’s said or done since he sat down.

“Russian?”

“Yeah, say something in Russian, Cas.”

Cas blinks. “ _ Chto-to po-russki _ ,” he says in his deep, deep voice.

Dean’s jaw practically dislocates itself, it drops so fast. Cas speaking Russian is everything that’s hot about him speaking Enochian, but without any of the “angels are dicks” baggage. The bartender is sufficiently impressed (or maybe just amused, or bored) to go along with Dean’s ridiculous request, and as he turns around to find a bottle of Everclear Dean leans even closer to Cas and asks what he said in Russian.

“Something in Russian,” Cas answers.

“Yeah, what’d you say?”

“No Dean, that’s what I said.”

“Oh. You’re funny.” Dean grins a stupid sloppy grin.

“Alright ‘Dmitri’, here you go.” 

“My name is Castiel,” Cas corrects, not looking away from Dean.

“Whatever. Bottoms up.” The bartender places the bottle and a single empty shot glass in front of Cas. The bottle is small, flask-sized at just 375ml, and Dean is immediately disappointed.

“What the hell man? This is nothin’.”

“Look, your friend here might be Russian but he’s still human.”

Dean laughs way too hard at this and takes another swig of his drink.

They stay for a while, Cas dutifully drinking down his bottle and showing exactly zero signs that it does a damn thing, Dean drinks down  _ his _ drinks too, and they do do something. As day turns to evening, people show up to fill the other barstools. They’re loud and animated as they cycle through, spending a few minutes getting their drinks before drifting away, but Cas and Dean just stay where they are. It’s quiet between the two of them, and still, like it was at the aquarium, and sometimes Dean’s eyes sparkle with wetness and he looks down and away from everyone around them so no one notices, stares into his drink, doesn’t wipe at tears that don’t fall. He knows somewhere in the back of his mind that he ought to feel like one of those lonely pathetic drunks crying into his glass, but with Cas by his side he can’t. Because he’s not alone.

Dean talks. About how everything still smells like Detroit; about the coldness he’d seen in Not-Sam’s eyes, how it’d scared him not because it was Lucifer but because he’d seen it in those eyes before, here, now, when Sam is Sam; about how sure he is that whatever he decides to do it won’t be the right choice. He talks about his mom.

Finally, Dean collapses into a hitching, mumbled mantra of “I can’t do this. Why does it have to be me?” sounding so much like he did in that hospital the night Sam wore those cold eyes and killed Alistair. Taking his arm and silently guiding him up from his place at the bar, Castiel raises Dean from this perdition too.

\-------------------------

They walk along the Strip, and while before he couldn't tell what time it was, Dean knows it's late now -- so late it's early. The sky is dark and clear, but no stars are visible; it's not black but an unnerving deep blue that somehow both absorbs and reflects the colors of the lights below. It's disorienting and alien and Dean can't tell if it's the strange artificial twilight that's making him nauseous or all the booze. He slips on something and grabs onto a strong arm to steady himself and doesn't let go. He probably could, could pull away and stand himself upright and sway a little but not too much, do the hard work, be the hero. But that arm is so solid and comforting and it doesn't pull away so Dean doesn't either. He grasps Cas' arm as they push through the throngs of drunk, happy revelers, and at some point Dean's hand slips down into Cas', and Cas wraps his warm fingers around Dean's, the same fingers he uses to smite and heal and grip a blade. Jimmy's fingers, but not. 

Dean doesn't let go, and neither does Cas.

Eventually Dean begins to stumble, the lights get too bright and the sky too dark and everything's just wrong. He says something to Cas, something he feels is so important, but it all comes out a jumble, exhaustion and alcohol distorting Dean's words. But Cas understands because Cas always understands, can always hear Dean and see Dean and know Dean, and it's terrible and beautiful and Dean hates it and craves it. Cas is guiding them into an alleyway, a delivery entrance behind some building, and when they're alone he leans in close to Dean and Dean thinks "this is it!" but instead of Cas' chapped lips on his he feels an arm slip around his waist and hears the rustle of wings and feels his stomach lurch from much more than just alcohol and then they land back on earth, back from wherever it is they go when they fly, and there's softness underneath Dean, and the fabric of Cas' cheap suit, and warmth above. And Cas's deep voice all around, murmuring quietly that it's time to rest.

So Dean rests.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oops, this work is going to have eight chapters now instead of seven because the seventh chapter got wayyyyy too long.
> 
> Also the Las Vegas Strip at 3am is a truly disorienting place.


	8. Revelations

When Dean wakes it’s because something is tickling his face. It’s not the kind of tickle that jolts him out of sleep, worried a bug is on him or that Sam is pulling some prank like he’s 12 years old again, but the soft kind that’s more confusing than alarming. It’s also the kind of sleep -- heavy and watery and unsatisfying -- that comes from having drunk way too much the night before, even for Dean. It’s the kind of sleep you swim up through, the surface always further away than you expect and harder to keep your head above than really makes sense. When Dean finally gets his eyes open, it takes a few slow blinks before he can focus on whatever it is that’s been brushing up against his nose: Castiel’s tie. And -- _bhhhhh_... Dean blows something off his lips -- a tiny black down feather.

It takes a moment for Dean’s awareness to expand into his whole still-half-asleep body, but when he does he realizes he’s back at the motel room, curled up on his bed, with his head and one arm thrown across Castiel’s lap. At first he thinks the sun must not be up yet because it’s so dark, but then he sees the darkness move a little and he recognizes that he’s looking up at Castiel’s wings arched above and around him. Absurdly, the first thing Dean thinks of is a blanket fort.

Dean blinks a few times to clear the sleep from his eyes and sees that Cas is staring off into space, down and to the side, eyes not really directed at anything. Or at least, not anything Dean can see with his own.

“Hey Cas, you okay?”

Cas blinks once, a big exaggerated thing like he’s resetting something, and turns his gaze toward Dean. His face softens and Dean feels warm -- warm _er_.

“Yes, just listening.”

“Listening?”

“For Lucifer.”

“Oh yeah, that.” Dean scowls a little, then flips the end of Cas’ tie around so it lays correctly. The tie immediately flips itself back. “Why is your tie always on backwards?”

“I don’t know. I’ve retied it many times starting in various positions but it always ends up backwards. Are men’s fashion accessories capable of quantum superpositioning?”

“Uhhh, maybe you just don’t know how to tie a tie.”

“That is also a possibility.”

The tie issue settled, a part of Dean’s brain thinks he should be concerned that he’s laying in bed snuggling with his best friend. But it’s only a small part, and the rest of his brain tells it to chill out for a sec, like maybe there are other, bigger things to freak out about, and in the scheme of things this one is pretty minor. The world _is_ ending, after all. Wasn’t the point of this trip to squeeze one nice thing into their lives before everything goes to hell on earth?

While Dean lays there justifying this moment of happiness to himself, the springs on the other bed groan a little in protest as a heavy object shifts itself into a sitting position. When Sam says “Hey,” his voice sounds far too loud for the room that had previously only been filled with the sounds of breathing and suddenly Dean is fully awake. He jerks up and way from Cas whose wings snap up out of the way, knocking over a lamp and making a dry, hollow, crumply sound as all the long stiff flight feathers are pushed into the ceiling. At the same time, Dean rolls over so violently he’d have rolled himself all the way off the bed if not for clutching at the cheap bedspread at the very last second. As it is, he still ends up half-kneeling on the floor.

“ _Fuck!_ Sam what are you doing hhh… _woah_.” Dean’s mini freakout takes a backseat while he looks up at Castiel with his wings stretched straight up, feathers streaming out behind him like banners being carried into battle. Everything about Cas’ body language says “soldier of God” while his face just looks worried about the lamp.

“Uh,” Sam says, pulling Dean’s attention away from the fearsome angel he was just cuddling. “Sleeping?” 

Dean runs a hand down his face and is immediately aware of everything he hadn’t been aware of just a moment ago: the patch of dried drool on his cheek, his slimy teeth and fuzzy tongue, the way his jeans twisted uncomfortably as he slept, the fact that he’s still wearing his shoes for god’s sake. He’d been so comfortable just a moment before, and now all that’s dropped away. Dean can’t quite look at Sam, but he can tell just from the way he takes his next breath that Sam’s about to say something “important” so Dean cuts him off at the pass.

“What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, right?” Dean’s tone is soaked with pleading for Sam to just leave whatever he was going to say unsaid.

Sam’s face flashes through about ten different kinds of concern, clearly fighting with himself over what to say. Dean’s about to reinforce his plea when he hears Cas’ deep, steady voice behind him. “Dean, we’re actually in Henderson.”

Dean turns back to the angel, whose wings have settled back down into a much less intimidating position. “Alright well, whatever happens in _Henderson_ stays in Henderson then!”

“It doesn’t have to, you know." This is Sam quiet but certain, Mr. Sensitive here to save the freakin' day with a marriage counseling session or some shit.

A phone rings somewhere and while Dean is thanking an absent god, Sam is upright and looking around before Dean can even react. "Got it," Sam announces, grabbing the flip phone and squinting down at the tiny display on the front. "Bobby," he tells Dean, waving the phone in front of him and stepping outside to take the call.

For a moment, Dean doesn't move. He thinks about all the things he could do, probably _should_ do: get up, pace around, make a pot of shitty motel coffee, clean a gun… Whatever he’s going to do, he should do it soon because his knees are starting to yell at him from where they’ve been ground into the ratty carpet. Instead of any of those other things, he crawls back onto the bed and snuggles up to Cas again. Cas settles his wings back around Dean, shrouding him from the world.

In the silence, Dean can hear Sam’s muffled voice outside as he talks shop with Bobby. Cas is already far away again, listening to angel radio or staring through the fabric of space-time or whatever it is he does to track things down for the Winchesters. Between Sam and Cas and now Bobby, it seems the universe has decided break time’s over. Back to the grind. As much as he likes to make a show of lazing around, especially if it’ll annoy Sam, Dean’s a restless guy at heart and if he’s being honest a milk run of a case sounds pretty okay right now. And it's not like this has been a super awesome vacation to begin with… Except now that he thinks about it, it kinda has. Except for one thing. 

“Cas.”

“Yes, Dean,” Cas replies, attention back in the room, back on Dean.

Dean pushes himself up off Cas’ lap. It’s awkward and the position hurts Dean’s bad shoulder, but it doesn’t matter because suddenly Dean’s got his lips on Cas’ and even though Dean hasn't kissed anyone this chastely since the 10th grade it's actually kind of perfect.

At first, Castiel is still. Frozen. Just as Dean's about to pull away and stammer out that he's misjudged and that he's sorry, he feels Cas' hand on his neck and hears the angel make a small sound of surprise and contentment. Dean deepens the kiss, parting his mouth a bit around the plush, pink lips he's been sneaking glances at since he first met the angel. Cas, though, doesn't seem to get what Dean is hinting at and continues to press himself against Dean in a manner that can really only be described as enthusiastically demure. It's not that Cas is a prude or anything, Dean's pretty sure, it's that he has no idea what he's really doing. Going on pure technique, if Dean had to measure this kiss against all the others he's had in his life Cas wouldn't even rank in the top half. But Cas keeps making these little sounds and his hand has gone from gripping Dean's neck to petting across the side of his face and into his hair and yeah, Cas might not know what he's doing but he sure as hell knows what he wants.

Castiel’s moans deepen into something Dean finally recognizes as Enochian, quiet indecipherable murmurs between Cas’ endearingly small kisses. Dean pulls away to shift himself into a more comfortable position, still laying across Cas’ lap while Cas curls down over him. Looking up at the other man, Dean expects words to pass between them -- questions, reassurances, whatever -- but instead Cas just dives back in for more of what he’d been doing before.

Dean laughs quietly against Cas’ mouth. “Hey, hey, lemme…” and Dean uses his lips to nudge Cas into parting his own. Once he can, Dean licks the tip of his tongue into Cas’ mouth and Cas’ eyes go wide like “Oh wow, there’s _more_?!” And yeah man, there is definitely more.

It’s not long before the kiss gets messed up because Dean can’t stop grinning like an idiot, and since Cas doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing he just keeps kissing Dean’s teeth and the whole thing continues to get more and more absurd. Before he can school his features and get back to the very serious business of making out with an angel of the lord, Dean hears the doorknob jiggle in the “Hey, I’m comin’ in” pattern he and Sam worked out as horny teenagers living with zero privacy. _Of course_ Sam knew the two of them would be getting up to something...

When Sam walks back in he’s careful to look up and around and over, and just anywhere but the bed, but even so all he’d see are wings. Wings and Dean’s head popped up from between them, and now Cas’ too. “Hey uh, got us a case,” Sam says. When Dean and Cas make no effort to get up, Sam shakes his head and offers to go grab some coffee. “Take your time, guys.”

\--------------------------------

Dean blows the steam from his coffee before taking a tentative sip. Nope, still too hot. “So you’re not…”

“Surprised? No.” Sam continues stuffing clothes into his duffle, while Dean watches Cas methodically take things out of Dean’s, look at them, and then place them back in the green canvas bag. “Dean, you really think it takes me all day to make fake IDs? I was giving you guys some space, and _thank you_ , by the way, for finally getting your head out of your ass about this.” Sam’s face softens. “I’m happy for you two.”

“Yeah okay well um, th-thanks.” Dean very pointedly does not look at his brother.

Apparently done with his examination of Dean’s things, Cas just sits quietly until he notices something on the floor between the beds. Picking it up, Cas walks over to hand it to Dean. It’s a small black feather, maybe three or four inches long, one that could be easily mistaken as belonging to a crow. Dean takes the feather and tucks it in his shirt pocket, patting it protectively.

Finished with his bag, Sam takes one last look around the room to make sure they’ve got everything. Dean doesn’t miss how his eyes linger on Cas’ wings, which are still visible. “So you just, like, have wings now?”

Cas squints up at Sam, everything about his expression radiating pity at the man’s bewildering stupidity. “I’ve always had wings, Sam. I am an angel.”

“Yes Cas, thank you. What I mean is, you never showed them before.”

“Dean likes them,” Castiel says simply, a little hint of, is that pride? showing on his face. 

Dean blushes and ducks his head and goddamn he will _not_ do wrong by this guy. Just, whatever else happens, however else the apocalypse plays out, Dean will do whatever he can to keep him safe. Which feels a little silly given that Castiel’s got literal magical powers and hundreds of millions of years of tactical experience and they’re going up against equally powerful supernatural beings and well, Dean’s just a regular guy, but he means it.

“So uh, where’re we headed?” Dean asks Sam, working hard to brush past the wave of feelings.

“Nebraska. Babysitter got mauled by something.”

"Hope no one told Mom."

"Huh?"

"That the… babysitter's… dead. No? Nothin'? Okay." Dean slinks away, taking Sam’s deadpan irritation as his cue to start gathering stuff up and walking it out to the car.

A few minutes later everything’s been stowed away (including Cas’ wings), the room’s been swept one last time, and it’s time to head out. Cas climbs in the back and, pleased and a little surprised, Dean doesn’t say anything. 20 miles later, as I-15 winds north into the desolate Nevada desert, Dean finally lets himself look back to see if Cas is still with them. Dean warms when he sees shining blue eyes looking back at him in the rearview mirror.

“So, you gonna stick around?”

Cas looks at Dean a little longer, then turns his gaze out over the desert landscape before bringing it back to Dean. “I’ll take this road with you for as long as I can,” he answers with a smile.

This should terrify Dean _\-- does_ terrify him -- but fuck if it doesn't also thrill him a little, make him feel warm inside, make him feel hopeful. Dean still doesn't have a fucking clue how he’s supposed to save the world, or if he even can, but he's got the only good thing in all of heaven smiling at him from the backseat of his car and damn if that's not something.

They'll figure it out. They always do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kinda hard to write a soft lovey ending for this that’s canon-appropriate knowing that Cas will continue to randomly disappear on Dean for the next decade and Dean will continue to struggle with existential despair, but whatever. Dean can have a little Cas who sticks around, as a treat.
> 
> Between the tektite and the feather, I imagine that Cas keeps giving Dean things and he ends up amassing a collection of small random objects that have no power or meaning beyond simply “Cas” and “love,” which makes them the most powerful talismans Dean has.
> 
> Finally, thank you and I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. It was a nice bit of bittersweet distraction during the last months of 2020, and was a good way for me to get out of my apartment, so to speak.


End file.
